Power-sharing talks between Tsvangirai’s MDC party and Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF party ended last weekend without agreement and the Zimbabwean opposition leader told South African Radio on Wednesday that negotiations were unlikely to resume any time soon.
Senior MDC officials said that Tsvangirai had in fact lost faith in the negotiations held under the mediation of South African President Thabo Mbeki and had instead embarked on a campaign to mobilise some of Zimbabwe’s neighbours, several key African governments and major international powers to intensify pressure on Mugabe to give up power.
“Tsvangirai is fed up with this (talks) process,” said a member of the MDC national executive, who did not want to be named because he did not have permission from the party to speak to the media.
“He has already embarked on a diplomatic offensive that will see him visit African countries and ask SADC (Southern African Development Community) members, the African Union and the United Nations to exert pressure on Mugabe to cede power,” the MDC executive member added.
The opposition official said Tsvangirai began his diplomatic campaign immediately after a SADC summit in Johannesburg about a fortnight ago when he visited some of Zimbabwe’s neighbours.
The next leg of the campaign, which the MDC official said would begin Thursday, shall see Tsvangirai visiting key leaders in West Africa before touring some influential European capitals.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa confirmed Tsvangirai’s new focus on mobilising diplomatic pressure against Mugabe but insisted that the opposition party remained committed to the stalled power-sharing talks.
Chamisa said, “As I speak the president (Tsvangirai) is in Zambia at the burial of President Levy Mwanawasa. We expect him back tomorrow (Thursday) before he embarks on the diplomatic offensive in West Africa at the weekend.”
The MDC spokesman – who declined to say which countries Tsvangirai planned to visit – said the opposition party hoped that concerted pressure by African leaders and other international players could still force Mugabe to be more flexible in power-sharing negotiations than he has been so far.
The talks between ZANU PF and MDC, aimed at forming a government of national unity that is seen as the best way to end Zimbabwe’s long-running political and economic crisis, have stalled over how to share executive power between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
Under a proposed deal brokered by Mbeki and endorsed by (SADC Mugabe would remain executive president in charge of both state and government.
Tsvangirai would virtually be a ceremonial prime minister supposedly in charge of government policy but without power to hire or fire government ministers. He would also not chair Cabinet meetings.
The opposition leader, who under the proposed deal would be required to report regularly to Mugabe, refused to sign the deal saying he could not be a prime minister without executive power.
Meanwhile, one of Zimbabwe’s foremost political scientists yesterday said there was need for the international community to force both Mugabe and Tsvangirai to climb down from their positions and reach a compromise deal to end the country’s decade-long crisis.
University of Zimbabwe political scientist Eldred Masunungure said the current political impasse required an external force that could pressurise both protagonists in the same way Africa’s frontline states and apartheid South Africa respectively pushed nationalist guerrillas and Rhodesia’s Ian Smith to sign the 1979 Lancaster House agreement.
The agreement paved the way for Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.
He said: “The missing link in the current talks is an outside force with the capacity to exert pressure on the MDC and ZANU PF to reach a compromise.
Smith, Mugabe (and Joshua Nkomo) were forced to climb down on their demands at Lancaster House due to pressure from South Africa and the frontline leaders.” – ZimOnline