The following petition was drawn up on the spot and signed by participants, including many MDC members as well as Vigil and ROHR supporters, before being slipped under the Embassy’s front door: “Zimbabweans exiled in the United Kingdom demand that the 2nd Stakeholders’ Meeting on the new constitution should be allowed to take place without sabotage by Zanu (PF). We deplore the upsurge in political violence and the arbitrary arrests of opposition members and warn you that we will continue our campaign until there are free and fair elections.”
The African philanthropist Mo Ibrahim, whose foundation promotes African leadership, made some stinging comments about Zimbabwe this week. “Zimbabwe should have been a success story. It is a wonderful country with wonderful resources but unfortunately is at a political impasse. That is really a problem. We really hope the Zimbabwean people will somehow come together to resolve this impasse and enable the country to move forward. It’s unfortunate to have this kind of stagnation in the political scene which is affecting the performance of the country.
The Zimbabwean people are among some of the best-educated Africans and very enterprising. So let’s hope that they get their act together and somehow we see Zimbabwe rising again,” he said.