Messages From Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Sunday his party would rather quit power-sharing talks than sign an unsatisfactory deal and challenged President Robert Mugabe to call a new election.

“We are saying to him you can call another election under international supervision and let’s see who is going to win that race,” he told a rally to celebrate the ninth anniversary of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in a March 29 election but fell short of enough votes to avoid a June run-off, which was won by Mugabe unopposed after Tsvangirai pulled out, citing violence and intimidation against his supporters.

“We would rather have no deal than a bad deal,” Tsvangirai said.

The post-election talks are deadlocked over how to share executive power between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, putting off any chance of rescuing Zimbabwe from its economic collapse.

Mugabe has said he will form a cabinet with or without Tsvangirai.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, mandated by regional countries to mediate in the Zimbabwe talks, was expected to arrive in Harare on Monday. He has come under repeated fire for not being tough enough with Mugabe.

Other southern African leaders have taken a hard line against Mugabe. But he has refused to budge, and the MDC has made it clear it has little faith in Mbeki as a mediator.

“President Mbeki is coming, but don’t worry about him. He is not the one who is going to sign the agreement. He is going to have to persuade me to shift my position,” Tsvangirai told the rally in the city of Gweru in central Zimbabwe.

“But don’t worry. One thing I will not do is to sell you out.”

Zimbabweans hoped the election would usher in a new era of economic prosperity. Instead, there is no relief in sight from the world’s highest annual inflation rate of over 11 million percent and severe shortages of basic goods.

The election run-off was condemned around the world and drew toughened sanctions from Western countries whose support is vital for reviving Zimbabwe‘s ruined economy.

A smaller, breakaway faction of the MDC, led by Arthur Mutambara, is the third party in negotiations aimed at forming a national unity government.

Tsvangirai told the rally an agreement was out of the question unless Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, was prepared to compromise.

“The issue that we are facing here is that Mugabe must accept to surrender some of his powers for the power-sharing arrangement to work. If that doesn’t happen there is no deal,” he said, speaking in both English and the local Shona language.

Tsvangirai has stood his ground, despite mounting pressure for an end to a political crisis that has driven millions of Zimbabweans over the country’s borders, straining regional economies.

“We have time on our side. And we have people behind us,” he said.

(Source)

The Harare government Saturday dismissed the decision by Canada to impose targeted sanctions as ‘misinformed and unfortunate’, saying it will further hit ordinary Zimbabweans.

On Friday Canadian Foreign Minister David Emerson announced that his country had imposed targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe saying it was a protest against ‘intimidation and state-sponsored violence’ against opposition supporters by President Robert Mugabe’s government.

The Canadian government said it was banning arms exports, freezing the assets of top Zimbabwean officials and banning Zimbabwean aircraft from its airspace or landing in Canada.

Zimbabwe Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, speaking to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, said: ‘It is clear where they are taking a cue from. It is an unfortunate decision and an unjustifiable action. There is no opposition that is being intimidated. We are negotiating with the opposition that Canada claims to be saying is being intimidated.’

It was an apparent reference to the power-sharing talks between the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and ruling Zanu PF party to which Chinamasa belongs.

The MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said he will not agree to any settlement with Mugabe unless it gives him the authority to govern Zimbabwe.

Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in a March 29 election but fell short of enough votes to avoid a June 27 run-off election. Mugabe won the second round that Tsvangirai pulled out citing massive violence and intimidation against his supporters. The opposition claimed that Zanu PF militia killed about 100 of its supporters between the two elections.

The run-off was not recognized by many countries around the world and attracted sanctions from Western countries – such as the EU and the US whose support is pivotal for reviving Zimbabwe’s economy that is on a free-flow.

Responding to the imposition of sanctions by Canada, Nelson Chamisa the MDC spokesperson said: ‘This is strictly a matter between the two (those targeted by the sanctions and Canada), but we can comment in detail further only after digesting the statement by Canada.’

(Source)

Main opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has rejected President Robert Mugabe’s ultimatum – whose deadline was yesterday – for him to sign a power-sharing agreement or risk being left out of his cabinet. The move paved way for Mugabe to announce a new cabinet, delayed since early July due to ongoing talks. Mugabe is now expected to announce his cabinet any day from today. A last ditch attempt to save the deal failed yesterday after Tsvangirai refused to attend meetings in Harare where he would have been under pressure to sign. Tsvangirai was in South Africa yesterday and was expected to return last night or today. South African president Thabo Mbeki was yesterday forced to cancel a trip to Harare to try to make a breakthrough after Tsvangirai said he would not be around. The MDC said Mugabe’s ultimatum on talks was “ill-advised and unnecessary”. It said the demand showed his contempt for SADC and AU leaders who are behind the negotiations. The party said the threat would sabotage negotiations and provided further evidence that Mugabe – “author of the current crisis” – was negotiating in bad faith. MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa yesterday said Mugabe’s ultimatum to Tsvangirai was “misguided”. “Negotiations don’t work on the basis on political threats and ultimatums. We don’t understand all these outbursts. We are equal partners in the talks and we want to make it clear we won’t be intimidated or stampeded into signing a raw deal,” Chamisa said.

“We don’t want to swallow a poisonous offer. Why should we accept an agreement giving us the position of ceremonial or titular prime minister? Why on earth should we accept this proposal? The people don’t want it. We won’t be commandeered by anyone to sign the agreement.” Chamisa said the talks had stalled because of ZANU PF’s “inflexibility and rigidity”. He said it would be “political suicide” for Mugabe to appoint a cabinet and go it alone as the economic crisis would worsen. “First, if Mugabe goes ahead unilaterally and intransigently, that would be a further confirmation of his dictatorship and autocracy. Second, if he goes it alone it would be tantamount to political suicide,” Chamisa said. “That would be his choice and we won’t stop him. He seems determined to self-destruct.” Informed sources said yesterday Tsvangiari wrote a letter to Mbeki on Tuesday telling him he would not be in Harare to attend the meetings on the talks. “Mbeki was supposed to come to Harare yesterday but was forced to cancel the trip because Tsvangirai wrote to him saying he would not be around,” a source said. “Tsvangirai did not want to attend what he thinks would be hopeless meetings that would not make a difference.”

Mbeki’s office yesterday said he was not coming to Harare. It did not say why, but sources said Tsvangirai had refused to take part in the meetings. Tsvangirai is said to have confirmed his position to Mbeki in Zambia on Wednesday at the late president Levy Mwanawasa’s funeral. Sources said Tsvangirai’s communication to Mbeki on Tuesday explained his remarks on South Africa’s Radio 702 on Wednesday when he said he was not aware of plans to resume talks soon. Tsvangirai told Radio 702 that the power-sharing negotiations had broken down. Tsvangirai rejected the post of prime minister, saying it would not give him enough executive powers in government. Tanzania, which is the AU chair, said there should be an equitable power-sharing arrangement in Zimbabwe. “There is a problem and we still hope the mediation will continue and we still hope wisdom will prevail,” Tanzanian Foreign minister Bernard Membe said this week. “We would prefer a solution be arrived at immediately because of the escalating economic crisis. We still pray that a solution will be found towards a 50% power-sharing solution.”

Tsvangirai said Mugabe wants to retain control of the security ministries and thus control of the army, police and intelligence services to protect his power-base and position. “There was an attempt to fragment the cabinet. With some ministries reporting to the president and some ministries reporting to the prime minister,” he told Talk Radio 702. “In this case the economic and social ministries will go to the prime minister. The security ministries will go to the president.” Mugabe also had contact with Mbeki in Lusaka where he reportedly told him he would be proceeding with plans to announce a new cabinet. Mugabe is said to be planning to appoint his cabinet today or during the weekend. Initially Mugabe wanted to announce his cabinet in early July before the African Union summit in Egypt but was stopped by Mbeki. Last week Mugabe threatened to announce his cabinet and he reportedly wanted to do it on Sunday but he was again blocked by Mbeki who wanted to make a last ditch bid to secure an agreement. Negotiations were held in Pretoria last weekend, but no deal could be clinched.

The MDC claims Mbeki is protecting Mugabe in the talks by insisting Tsvangirai should sign a “raw deal”. Part of the problem, sources said, was that Mbeki recently refused to meet Tsvangirai two weeks ago and the MDC leader was “merely hitting back”. Mbeki’s failed trip to Harare handed Mugabe a pretext to go ahead and appoint a cabinet without MDC involvement. Mugabe, under growing pressure from hardliners to go it alone, said in Zambia on Wednesday if Tsvangirai did not sign the agreement by yesterday he would proceed to appoint his cabinet. “If after tomorrow (meaning yesterday) Tsvangirai does not want to sign, we will certainly put together a cabinet. We feel frozen at the moment,” Mugabe told journalists in Zambia on Wednesday. “We are a government and we are government that is empowered by elections. So we should form a cabinet. We will not allow a situation where we will not have a cabinet forever.” Mugabe was defeated by Tsvangirai in the first round of the presidential election in March but the MDC leader pulled out of a cutthroat runoff in June, citing political violence and killings. Mugabe claimed victory, but this was rejected by SADC and AU observers. A number of African and world leaders refused to recognise his dubious win. Nigerian Foreign minister Chief Ojo Maduekwe on Tuesday said Abuja did not recognise Mugabe, adding Zimbabweans deserve “a lot better”. “We are also concerned that there should be no meltdown in Zimbabwe, the economy is already in tatters, and inflation rate is over a million per cent. The people of Zimbabwe deserve a lot better than they are going through,” he said.

(Source)

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has said the opposition MDC has until Thursday to agree a power-sharing deal, or he will form a government. “We feel frozen at the moment [without a government],” he told state media.

The MDC has rejected the ultimatum and said it will not be “bullied” into signing a deal. Both Mr Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai say they won elections earlier this year. The MDC says it was subjected to state-sponsored violence.

At talks mediated by South Africa the two rivals agreed that Mr Tsvangirai would be named prime minister while Mr Mugabe remained president, but they cannot agree on how to share powers.

The MDC wants Mr Mugabe to become a ceremonial president, while the ruling Zanu-PF party insists he retain control of the security forces and the powers to appoint and dismiss ministers.

“If after tomorrow [Thursday], Tsvangirai does not want to sign, we will certainly put together a cabinet,” the state-owned Herald newspaper quotes Mr Mugabe as saying on his return from Zambia on Wednesday.

“We are a government and we are government that is empowered by elections. We should form a cabinet. We would not allow a situation where we will not have a cabinet forever,” he said.

(Source)

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said power-sharing negotiations have broken down and are unlikely to resume soon, South Africa‘s Talk Radio 702 reported on Wednesday. The talks have stalled over how executive power should be shared by President Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai, who refused to sign an agreement that would have made him prime minister. Tsvangirai has protested against a proposed deal, saying it did not give him enough executive powers in government. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader said he refused to sign a deal with Mugabe because the proposal would have given the veteran leader control of security forces. “There was an attempt to fragment the Cabinet. With some ministries reporting to the president and some ministries reporting to the prime minister,” he told Talk Radio 702. “In this case the economic and social ministries will go to the prime minister. The security ministries will go to the president.”

Talk Radio 702 quoted Tsvangirai as saying he “was not aware of plans” for the talks to resume soon. Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in a March 29 election but fell short of enough votes to avoid a run-off vote, which was won by Mugabe unopposed after Tsvangirai pulled out citing violence and intimidation against his supporters. The deadlock has worsened a catastrophic economic decline marked by the world’s highest inflation rate of over 11-million percent, and chronic food, fuel and foreign currency shortages that have driven millions of Zimbabweans to regional countries. Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, is expected to announce a Cabinet soon, a move the MDC has warned would endanger efforts to form a national unity government. South African President Thabo Mbeki, mandated by regional countries to mediate in the Zimbabwe talks, has drawn fire for not taking a tough line with Mugabe, a policy he says would only exacerbate tensions. Tsvangirai was critical of Mbeki. “The mediator says there is sufficient grounds for us to sign. He is not the one who is going to sign. It’s me.”

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Five police officers came to my house in Chiredzi at 8.00 am this morning and said that they were from Harare and wanted to see my rifles and permits. After they had finished checking all the permits and relevant rifles, they then said that they have been instructed to confiscate all rifles of 308 calibre and over with the ammunition plus all reloading equipment. I asked them for paper work showing their instructions. They said that they did not have this paperwork and did not require it to take my rifles and equipment. I even battled to get them to sign a receipt for the equipment taken, but managed it after threatening to call my lawyer.

I believe that the ZANU PF government is disarming citizens in Zimbabwe of arms that could be used against them; we have been left with virtually peashooters to protect ourselves against their army and militia who are mostly armed with the AK rifle.

The indication here is that Mugabe’s government has no intention of surrendering authority to Morgan Tsvangari and will fight to stay in power.

(Source: by email)

Zimbabwean negotiators returned to Harare at the weekend after another unsuccessful attempt by President Thabo Mbeki to achieve an agreement on a power-sharing unity government. But Mbeki has succeeded in persuading President Robert Mugabe to postpone – at least for a week – his plans to appoint a cabinet unilaterally while he drafts a new compromise proposal. For Mugabe to appoint a cabinet on his own would kill the negotiations, it is widely believed. The negotiators from Mugabe’s Zanu PF and the two formations of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change continued their separate meetings on Saturday in Pretoria with Mbeki’s emissaries to the dialogue, Constitutional Affairs Minister Sydney Mufamadi, Director-General in the Presidency Frank Chikane and chief presidential legal adviser Mojanku Gumbi. But the envisaged joint meeting among all the parties was not held because ZANU PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s larger MDC faction (MDC-T) remained far apart on the central sticking point of how to share executive powers between the president and prime minister. In a plan put to Tsvangirai by Mbeki and other regional leaders at the Southern African Development Community summit in Sandton two weeks ago, Mugabe would remain president while Tsvangirai would take up a new post of prime minister. But Tsvangirai rejected the plan because he said it would offer him no real executive powers.

The Zimbabwean negotiators paid a courtesy call on Mbeki while they were in Pretoria for the latest round of negotiations, although their substantive separate meetings were only with his emissaries. Authoritative sources said Mbeki’s emissaries had adjourned the talks on Saturday so that they could try to devise their own compromise proposals, which would be tabled to all the parties this week. Mugabe had therefore been urged to avoid appointing a cabinet at least until Saturday. “We have adjourned but we are all on standby to meet the mediators again this week,” said an authoritative source. “They (mediators) have listened to what each side had to say and they now want to help break the stalemate by coming up with their own proposals to break this stalemate.” Sources said the ZANU PF negotiators had told the South African mediators that all their party was interested in now was knowing whether Tsvangirai would sign the deal put to him at the SADC summit. If not, Mugabe wanted to move ahead with appointing a new cabinet and running the country.

Tsvangirai’s negotiators, on the other hand, had told the mediators that their party would not budge on its demands for executive power for Tsvangirai, and would not accept the current deal in which Mugabe is designated as chair of the cabinet and Tsvangirai his deputy. They want Tsvangirai to be designated head of the government, chair the cabinet or at the very least be designated co-chair of the cabinet so that he is equal with Mugabe and not below him in any power-sharing arrangement. And they also want Mbeki to declare the dialogue dead if ZANU PF refuses to compromise, so that they can focus on the next stages of the struggle. But ZANU PF remains opposed to all of the MDC-T demands. It seems that unless one of the sides shifts its positions this week, the negotiations will collapse and Mugabe will proceed with a government of his own choice. The wholesale arrest of MDC-T MPs last week was seen as an indication that Mugabe had given up on the talks and was resorting to his old-style tactics of using force to retain power. Four of the five arrested MPs were still in police custody at the weekend. The MDC-T formation alleged there was a state-led conspiracy to get its MPs convicted and jailed to reduce the party’s razor-thin majority in parliament. However, the MDC-T believes that Mugabe will ultimately be forced to comprise by Zimbabwe‘s collapsing economy, knowing that investors and donors will finance a rescue package only if Tsvangirai gets the main say in determining policy.

(Source)