Rights groups join forces to support roadmap

A new combined report from Idasa, RAU, SAPES, Solidarity Peace Trust, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, and the Zimbabwe Liberators Platform said the SADC Troika decision in Livingstone and changing understandings of Mugabe’s health had thrown Zanu (PF)’s early poll plan into turmoil.

Zanu (PF)’s attempts to steamroll its agenda pass the extraordinary SADC summit in Namibia over the weekend also hit a brick wall – with SADC insisting that its road map to free and fair elections in Zimbabwe must be followed to the letter. The Zimbabwe roadmap was bumped off the summit’s agenda after President Jacob Zuma pulled out at the last minute, citing domestic commitments.

The uncertainty continues to play out amid fierce lobbying of civic society leaders to accept the Zuma road map. “This is a critical time for civil society to make a major input into the process,” the rights groups says in the report, dubbed ‘Way Forward.

“Fundamental to any input would be a cohesive and unified position by civil society.” The rights groups said it was crucial that civil society as a whole strongly endorse the decision of the SADC Troika without amendment and present their position to all the political parties in Zimbabwe; to JOMIC; to all SADC individual member countries; and to the international community outside SADC and in the local Press.

“These interventions should culminate in the convening of a regional conference of civil society actors to pressure the SADC mediators into enforcing their new position and ensuring conditions for a free and fair election,” the report says. “The SADC decision has shaken Zanu (PF)’s assumption that SADC is entirely biddable,” the rights groups note. “SADC has quite clearly placed Zimbabwe centrally on its agenda, with an apparently strong desire to resolve the crisis.

“The AU approach to crises in its members will be strongly affected in the future by their decisions in relation to the Ivory Coast,” the groups said in relation to a disputed election that sparked a coup by the loser Laurent Gbagbo. Significantly, the groups noted that “Mugabe’s health now seems an increasingly serious issue, and must be raising concerns over whether

he would be able to withstand a rigorous campaign as Zanu (PF)’s only plausible candidate to oppose the popularity of Morgan Tsvangirai. Evidence suggests there are increasing divisions within Zanu (PF) on the way forward and the desirability of maintaining the GPA.”