President Jacob Zuma is to send his negotiation team to Harare this week to meet with parties to the Global Political Agreement ahead of the Southern African Development Community troika which will meet in Zambia on 31 March.
South Africa has been tasked by SADC to work with the Zimbabwean parties to find solutions to their political problems. The team will be led by political adviser Charles Nqakula.
Relations between President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change have soured over the past few weeks as security agents harassed members of Tsvangirai’s party.
Several MDC activists and legislators, including Energy Minister Elton Mangoma, have been arrested and charged, but are now out on bail. Police also refused to allow Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to hold a peace rally at the weekend but allowed ZANU-PF to do so.
Tsvangirai warned that the country could slide back to the chaos of 2008 and claimed that the country was now being run by “dark and sinister forces”. He said this after meeting several SADC leaders to brief them on the current situation in the country and said SADC must step in to stop the tension.
ZANU-PF has upped the intimidation since President Mugabe announced that the country might hold early elections because he was tired of the petty squabbles with the MDC.
Mugabe is, however, under pressure to postpone the elections until the climate is right to hold free, fair and credible elections.
One observer said that ZANU-PF is likely to listen to the SADC leaders but will continue to taunt the MDC because it has realised that the party panics easily, thus making it easier to derail their election campaign.
The observer also said the MDC was also making a lot of “noise” because some of its leaders wanted to show that they still had muscle ahead of the party congress scheduled for May.
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