“Zimbabwe will cooperate with the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) efforts to mediate between the government and the opposition MDC but would not welcome any “parallel initiatives”.
“Mbeki will report to the SADC’s Organ, which in turn will report to Summit. SADC will in turn brief the AU. SADC has done what ECOWAS, itself the habitat of President Kufour, is still to do in respect of the Nigeria debacle. Now, these fame buccaneers who seek to make names for themselves in British and American annals want to jump this huge maxim gun to venture into Zimbabwe, carrying white ghosts? They can go and hang on a banana tree.”
George Chiramba – Mugabe’s official spokesman in the State-owned newspaper, The Herald, on the intended fact-finding mission by the Pan-African Parliament.