Sources had told ZimOnline on Tuesday that the MOU would be signed notwithstanding demands by the MDC that President Robert Mugabe acts to end political violence and that an African Union envoy be appointed to help South African President Thabo Mbeki, the region’s chief mediator on Zimbabwe.
Both MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa and ZANU PF chief negotiator Patrick Chinamasa refused yesterday to answer questions why the MOU had not been signed.
But our sources said the document was not signed after the MDC insisted that Mugabe stops state-sponsored violence against its supporters and frees more than 1 500 of the opposition party’s activists held in police custody on charges of committing political violence. The opposition party says the charges are trumped up.
The MDC was also adamant that an AU envoy be appointed because the opposition party had lost confidence in Mbeki’s impartiality as mediator, said sources.
Tsvangirai (Morgan, the MDC leader) informed Sydney Mufamadi (South African local government minister) by phone that his party would not sign the memorandum of understanding or engagement if their preconditions were not met, said a foreign diplomat based in Harare, who did not want to be named.
Mufamadi – Mbeki’s point man on Zimbabwe – had been expected to travel to Harare to witness the signing of the MOU. Mbeki’s legal advisor Mojanku Gumbi and director in the South African President’s office Frank Chikane had also been expected to be present.
Meanwhile, Tsvangirai was quoted by the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme saying the situation in Zimbabwe was deteriorating and that talks with Mugabe’s party or government were far from commencing.
“The situation is deteriorating; there’s been state-sponsored violence, and yet we have not heard condemnation of these acts,” Tsvangirai told the BBC. “In fact, we have expressed the fact it has to be an expanded initiative to include the AU and that we will insist that AU participation will give us some comfort.”
An AU summit in Egypt last month called for dialogue between ZANU PF and the MDC that would culminate in a government of national unity seen by many on the continent as the best way to resolve Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis.
Zimbabwe, once a regional breadbasket, is in the grip of a severe political and economic crisis which critics blame on repression and wrong polices by Mugabe such as his haphazard fast-track land reform exercise that displaced established white commercial farmers and replaced them with either incompetent or inadequately funded black farmers.
The economic crisis that the World Bank has described as the worst in the world outside a war zone is seen in the world’s highest inflation rate of more than two million, severe shortages of food and every basic survival commodity. – ZimOnline
Post published in: News