The Vigil has always been doubtful about the ill-drafted GPA – a suspicion justified as the years passed without the promised reforms to enable free and fair elections. With the elections now due within a few months, it is the Vigil’s belief that only South Africa can save Zimbabwe.
Given legitimacy by the GPA and new confidence from four years of riding roughshod over the MDC, Zanu (PF) now denies it ever agreed to reforms. Hence its phony horror at ‘outrageous’ remarks by South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim Ebrahim who remarked that the MDC parties had ‘a legitimate argument’ in demanding further reforms before the elections. We at the Vigil are embarrassed by these churlish remarks, deliberately offensive to our South African friends, when so many of our people have found shelter there because of misgovernment at home.