Reuters
Sat 12 Apr
2008, 0:00 GMT
By Shapi Shacinda
LUSAKA, April 12 (Reuters) -
Southern African leaders meet on Saturday in an
attempt to break the
political impasse over Zimbabwe's disputed elections
and prevent the crisis
from turning violent.
But hopes the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) summit in Lusaka
will lead to a breakthrough appear slim in
the face of Zimbabwe President
Robert Mugabe's absence and the group's many
failures to persuade his
government to reform.
Mugabe, still seen as
a liberation hero in much of Africa, bristles at
criticism and dismisses
most detractors as puppets of former colonial power
Britain and the United
States.
Although the 84-year-old leader is more deferential to his
African
neighbours, he has shown no sign of giving in to those urging him to
respect
the results of the March 29 elections.
The presidential
election result has still not been published. The
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change won the parliamentary election and
says it won the
presidential poll. It has gone to court to force officials
to release those
results.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he could not understand
why it was
taking so long to announce the results and that the
"international
community's patience with the regime is wearing
thin".
"The Zimbabwean people have demonstrated their commitment to
democracy,"
Brown said in a statement. "We, and the leaders of the region,
strongly
share this commitment."
The political statemate in Zimbabwe
prompted Zambian President Levy
Mwanawasa to call the summit, earning a
rebuke from Mugabe, who decided not
to attend. It is unclear whether MDC
leader Morgan Tsvangirai will be there.
HOSTILITY
A senior
Zimbabwean official reinforced the government's hostility to the
meeting.
"We believe this meeting really is not necessary because
Zimbabwe has made
it quite clear that they are going to announce the
results," Joey Bimha,
Zimbabwe's foreign affairs permanent secretary, was
quoted as saying by
Zimbabwean state television.
The summit appears
the best chance to dissuade Mugabe from launching another
crackdown on the
opposition. Dozens of MDC activists and supporters were
beaten by police
last year in an aborted anti-government protest in the
capital
Harare.
Fears of a repeat of the violence have risen in the past two
weeks whilethe
MDC and Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF accuse each other of
preparing for street
battles.
Zimbabwean police have banned all
political rallies, including one planned
by the MDC for Sunday. The
opposition has called for an indefinite general
strike to begin next Tuesday
in the economically devastated nation.
An estimated one-quarter of
Zimbabwe's population have fled the crisis,
which is highlighted by
inflation of more than 100,000 percent and 80
percent
unemployment.
Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on
Friday that
Zimbabwe "now stands on the brink".
"SADC must insist
that a peaceful and just solution be found to resolve the
political crisis
in Zimbabwe," he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also expressed
concern that the crisis in
Zimbabwe would get worse without prompt action, a
U.N. spokeswoman said.
There are nagging doubts, if not outright
pessimism, that SADC will be able
to get tough on Mugabe.
The
14-nation group has long been seen as toothless in its response to
Zimbabwe's political and economic problems.
SADC last year delegated
South African President Thabo Mbeki to oversee
negotiations between Mugabe's
ruling ZANU-PF and the MDC in an effort to
reach a political agreement that
would ensure a fair and free election.
The talks failed, prompting a wave
of criticism of SADC and Mbeki's "quiet
diplomacy" tactics. (Additional
reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe, Stella
Mapenzauswa, Cris Chinaka and
Muchena Zigomo; writing by Paul Simao; Editing
by Giles Elgood)
Sokwanele
Yesterday we heard reports of army jets flying over Harare and
this morning
there were large groups of army soldiers marching through the
centre of
Bulawayo.
The threat is ever present.
I doubt that
these open displays of intimidation are as effective against
the people as
they were seven years ago. The soldiers voted with us and they
know we won
and we know we won. The ironic thing about this is that we march
together
but the old man just will not accept it.
There is not much talk anymore
of whether the results will be announced or
not. The process seems pointless
(albeit necessary) when the answer is clear
for all to see. The only talk
now is of the way forward and the SADC
meeting.
I lay awake last
night wondering how the SADC meeting will unfold.
Historically, mugabe
arrives and makes as much of a grand entrance is as
allowed. He struts about
shaking hands and kissing cheeks. The world sees
this act of camaraderie.
Usually he has his ‘rent a crowd’ of supports to
applaud him. Again, another
attempt to pull the wool over. We know his
tactics as we see it time and
time again and I am trying to visualize this
all before it happens.
I
am relieved because I now hear he isn’t going to be at the SADC. I’m glad
we’ll be spared that hurt at least.
But I wonder if SADC could be so
strong as to make a decision without him
present? My dread now is it will
just be a stalemate.
Mugabe always has a plan. What’s it this
time?
Our only hope is to pray’ my priest tells me this morning. My
prayer is that
the members of SADC will do the right thing for the people of
Zimbabwe.
That democracy and human rights take priority over those
loyalties African
leaders seem to have for mugabe, even as he destroys us
and our country, and
that we will finally be free from the grip of the
dictator.
I pray for a return to the rule of law under our elected
President.
This entry was written by Noktula on Saturday, April
12th, 2008 at 2:00 am.
Moneyweb, SA
Tsvangirai hopes regional
leaders will assist cause.
Sarah Childress, Wall Street Journal
12 Apr
2008 03:57
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- As Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe hunkers
down in the aftermath of last month's inconclusive
presidential election,
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is seeking
support from Zimbabwe's
African neighbors in a last-ditch effort to pressure
the beleaguered
president to step aside.
Mr. Tsvangirai's Movement
for Democratic Change wrested control of the
country's parliament in
elections late last month, according to official
results. Independent
polling and the opposition's own count also showed him
beating Mr. Mugabe,
who has ruled Zimbabwe, often with an iron fist, for 28
years.
But
official results for the presidential race haven't been released, and
Mr.
Mugabe has shown signs he will fight to hold onto power. His government
has
arrested journalists accused of reporting without accreditation and
election
workers accused of stealing votes from Mr. Mugabe's party. On
Friday, the
government banned political rallies, and the MDC reported the
arrest of its
lawyer, Innocent Chagonda.
In a telephone interview Friday, Mr.
Tsvangirai -- who was in South Africa
for talks with government officials --
laid out his options for displacing
Mr. Mugabe. He said his party can agree
to a run-off, if official results
show that neither side won a majority of
votes, or rely on international
pressure to convince Mr. Mugabe to
concede.
Earlier this past week, Mr. Tsvangirai's party had ruled out the
first
option, saying they already had won the election outright. That leaves
international pressure, Mr. Tsvangirai said.
His best hope now is an
emergency meeting Saturday in Zambia of heads of
state from southern African
nations called the Southern African Development
Community. "There has to be
a consensus within SADC to say that Mugabe
cannot be a referee and a player
at the same time," he said.
To gather support for his cause, Mr.
Tsvangirai, the son of a bricklayer and
a carpenter, spent this week meeting
with regional leaders, including the
newly installed president of Botswana,
Seretse Khama Ian Khama; Tanzanian
President Jakaya Kikwete, who also is
chairman of the African Union; South
African President Thabo Mbeki; and that
country's ruling-party president,
Jacob Zuma.
As Zimbabwe has slipped
into economic decline, with sky-high inflation and
starving citizens, the
opposition previously has looked to SADC to pressure
Mr. Mugabe, who is
openly hostile and dismissive of Western pronouncements
on his
regime.
But SADC has been reluctant to condemn Mr. Mugabe, in part
because of his
status as a revolutionary leader who liberated Zimbabwe from
white rule in
1980. He was cheered at a SADC meeting just last
August.
Instead, regional powerhouse South Africa has pursued a "quiet
diplomacy"
approach to its crumbling neighbor. President Mbeki attempted to
broker
talks between the opposition and the ruling party to establish
election
reforms that would have at least allowed the opposition a fighting
chance
this time. Those discussions were largely
unsuccessful.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who called Saturday's
meeting, last year
denounced Zimbabwe as "a sinking Titantic" and called for
his neighbors to
take a new approach to dealing with its 84-year-old
leader.
Mr. Tsvangirai said he hopes this time SADC leaders will rally
behind the
Zambian view of Mr. Mugabe, after being embarrassed by him in the
past and
in light of his increasingly menacing post-election
behavior.
It is unclear how much influence SADC really holds over Mr.
Mugabe, even if
it were to publicly call for him to release election results
or step down.
Mr. Mugabe appears to have firm control of his military and
police forces.
But Mr. Tsvangirai, echoing the view of other prominent
Zimbabweans, said he
believes that just as Mr. Mugabe felt enabled by SADC's
silence to do as he
pleased, he would also be shamed by their
condemnation.
"The collective will of SADC will prevail over the
individual state," Mr.
Tsvangirai said. "If SADC spoke with one voice, it
will be just like in
March, when there was violence against opposition
leaders. He listened," he
said, referring to a bloody crackdown in 2007 that
spurred SADC to begin
mediating talks.
Mr. Tsvangirai grew up as the
eldest of nine children, with little time or
money for a conventional
education. At 22, he went to work in a nickel mine,
where he spent a decade,
establishing himself as a champion for workers'
rights. In 1988, Mr.
Tsvangirai was elected secretary-general of the
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade
Unions, the country's umbrella trade
organization. He pushed it to break its
alliance with the ruling party.
In 1999 he formed the Movement for
Democratic Change, which opposed
everything that Mr. Mugabe's Zimbabwe
African National Union-Patriotic Front
had come to stand for -- right down
to the open hand the opposition adopted
as a symbol: Zanu-PF touts a closed
fist.
As the focal point of the government's heavy-handed tactics, Mr.
Tsvangirai
has endured several arrests and beatings. He has survived four
assassination
attempts, according to the opposition, including one in which
several men
rushed into his office and tried to hurl him from a 10th-floor
window. Last
year, he was arrested and beaten in police custody, so severely
that his
face was left purple and swollen, with a huge gash in his
head.
Wall Street Journal
Globe and Mail, Canada
If power does
not change in Zimbabwe, the continent's turn toward good
governance will
falter
STEPHANIE NOLEN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
April 12,
2008 at 12:00 AM EDT
In the chaotic days after Zimbabwe's national
elections on March 29, I stole
an hour to go and visit a friend who lives in
a scrappy, struggling slum of
Harare. I made my way up the dirt path to her
two-room cement brick house,
stuck my head around the half-open door and
called, "Hello?" There was no
answer, so I stepped inside and opened my
mouth to call again. But the words
died: My friend Prisca was lying on the
battered old sofa. I could barely
recognize her. She had lost 40 pounds
since I had last seen her, a bit more
than a year earlier. She'd lost her
hair. There were oozing lesions on her
raw, exposed scalp. And as she
struggled to stand and greet me, I realized
she could no longer
walk.
Like one in five people in Zimbabwe, Prisca has HIV. She paid an
almost
unimaginable cost for her infection, losing nearly all her family and
living
with years of shame and ostracism. She fought back, and pioneered a
new
openness and acceptance for people with the virus. She is an activist of
legendary reputation. A year ago, she terrified me as much as she impressed
me, so steely was her will.
Now, she crumpled into sobs at the sight
of me. Prisca has progressed to
having AIDS. Because of Zimbabwe's political
and economic implosion, she can
no longer reliably obtain the
anti-retroviral medication that kept her
healthy. The AIDS support centre
where she was a counsellor stopped paying
salaries some time ago, when the
Zimbabwe dollar passed the point of about
five million to one, and it has
since folded altogether. She has no money to
feed the two AIDS orphans she
is raising, no money to send them to school,
no money for her drugs. She
will not live long, like this.
But two weeks ago, Prisca used two canes
and a couple of friends to get to
the polling station, voting for Zimbabwe's
opposition for the fourth time.
Like many of her fellow citizens, she has
vivid memories of the brutality of
the war of liberation, and they are
determined to stick to a peaceful path.
For the past eight years, they have
tried to improve their lives and bring
change to the country through the
ballot box.
Prisca is the primary reason why Zimbabwe matters — she and
the 12 million
people trapped along with her in the nightmare that is life
under Robert
Mugabe. But this country is important for other practical,
geopolitical
reasons as well — it has disproportionate significance for a
southern
African state with a few deposits of copper and platinum, and some
once-lovely tourist destinations.
CONJURING UP A BRITISH
MENACE
Mr. Mugabe, about to enter the 29th year of his rule, is not only
sucking
the life from his country — "the vampire," they call him, in the
neighbourhood where Prisca lives — but also holding back an entire
continent.
In his constant railing about colonialism ("We have to
keep the country out
of the hands of Gordon Brown," I heard Mr. Mugabe say,
at campaign rallies
before the vote — as if the British Prime Minister were
hunched over a map
at 10 Downing St., plotting to get his hands on the
charred remains of
Zimbabwe), he keeps the country and the continent looking
backward. Of
course, many of Africa's problems can still be traced directly
to
colonialism, but today, most people would like simply to look forward. "I
don't think there's anyone in Zimbabwe or the continent that would deny that
we are a product of colonialism, the good and the bad," said Godfrey
Chanetsa, once Mr. Mugabe's spokesman, now campaign manager for the
independent presidential challenger Simba Makoni. "But I think there's also
recognition that much now depends on us and what we are able to do for
ourselves. People are looking for a way to move on."
Mr. Mugabe,
larger and louder than life, is the chief obstacle.
He is one of the last
leaders of a liberation struggle to hold power in
Africa, and he regularly
invokes those credentials, appearing on the
state-owned broadcaster in his
fatigues even though it has been nearly three
decades since his movement put
down its guns, and in any case, Mr. Mugabe
never carried one himself. With
his incessant reminders to his people of how
much he sacrificed for them, he
insists on a now outdated reverence for his
generation.
THE
POSTINDEPENDENCE GENERATION
Yet more than half of the population of
sub-Saharan Africa was born after
the last of the independence wars; that
language is lost on them, their
priorities are entirely different. South
Africa's Nelson Mandela knew it,
and left office after one term, nearly a
decade ago. Mr. Mugabe's rhetoric
no longer resonates with anyone — except
the powerbrokers who stalk the
corridors of the African Union in their
bespoke suits.
He can seem like a caricature, but he does a superb job of
illuminating
Western hypocrisy. A few years ago, Britain moved to strip him
of his
knighthood after his land redistribution campaign violently forced a
thousand or so white farmers off their land. But there was no outcry from
the West when he presided over a campaign of execution against some 300,000
perceived political opponents in Matebeleland — they, of course, were
black.
Mr. Mugabe's use of postcolonial rhetoric is genuinely brilliant.
His words
may sound outdated in the rest of the world, but there is
frustration in
much of Africa over unfair global trade deals, foreign aid
that strips out
as much as it provides, crippling repayments demanded by
donor governments
for odious debts racked up by ousted dictators. There is
genuine and logical
resentment of Western imperialism here — and Mr. Mugabe
feeds craftily on
that sentiment. That, combined with the respect still
accorded to him as an
84-year-old and a veteran who supported other leaders
in their countries'
fights (Zimbabwe was a key front-line state in the war
against apartheid),
means that he steadily undermines the ability of
organizations such as the
African Union to stand up for any of the
principles of governance they
theoretically hold dear.
The AU has
taken some good steps in the past few years — denying its
presidency to
dictatorial Sudan, sending a peacekeeping force to Darfur,
and, just last
month, invading the Comoros to oust a tinpot colonel from
power. But the
organization freezes in the face of Mr. Mugabe's bluster, and
until it can
cope with Zimbabwe, it will not be taken seriously. "The
precedent is
extremely worrisome," said Sisonke Msimang, program director
for the Open
Society Initiative for Southern Africa. "Now, when, say, Angola
holds an
election and refuses to release the presidential results, there is
a
regional precedent for the Angolans to point to." Mr. Mugabe's worst
amendments to the constitution in recent years — restricting media and
civil-society groups such as hers, broadening his presidential powers and
undermining parliament — have emboldened other leaders who are reluctant
democrats, she said, calling it "a copycat effect."
Mr. Mugabe is, of
course, also the primary argument held up by all of those
in the West who
insist that it is useless and wasteful to give more aid to
Africa, that the
continent as a whole is a basket case, that it is absurd to
think there
could be transparent government or an end to corruption here.
U.S. President
George W. Bush, for example, cited Mr. Mugabe as his first
reason for his
refusal to sign on to the G8 plan for more aid in 2003.
PAYING THE
ZIMBABWE TAX
Countries from Mozambique to Senegal have had free and
democratic elections
in the past few years, dictators in Togo and Liberia
have been ousted, but
the scale of disaster in Zimbabwe (where the currency
hit 64 million to one
U.S. dollar yesterday) eclipses any progress. Mr.
Mugabe's reign of terror,
with its skilled use of the props of political
theatre such as farm
invasions, youth militias and mass home demolitions,
obscures the genuine
progress made in other places. Tanzania, Zambia,
Lesotho and a dozen other
struggling democracies pay a "Zimbabwe tax" in
their relations in the West,
and it will remain as long as Mr. Mugabe holds
power.
My once fierce friend Prisca, and the majority of Zimbabweans who,
we now
know, voted with her for change, continue to be denied by their state
and
let down by the rest of the continent, the rest of the world. The dearth
of
meaningful intervention by the West (just some half-hearted bank account
freezes and travel restrictions on Mr. Mugabe and his cronies) puts a lie to
any claims about intervention to support democracy and preserve human
rights.
Meanwhile, the silence from Africa is
agonizing.
"Zimbabweans' peaceful pursuit of democratic change forces the
continent to
hold up a mirror to itself and ask how committed it is to
democracy," a
long-time campaigner for change told me in Harare last week.
"The longer
they wait to act on Zimbabwe, the more ugliness there is in that
mirror."
By Our
Correspondent
HARARE, April 12, 2008 (thezimbabwetimes.com) - Zimbabwe
faces the prospect
of regional isolation after President Robert Mugabe
refused to attend an
extra-ordinary meeting of SADC leaders in Zambia today,
Saturday.
The 13 SADC heads of state meeting in the Zambian capital
Lusaka for a
special summit called specifically to pressure Mugabe to issue
results from
the March 29 vote are expected to have harsh words for the
Zimbabwe regime.
Diplomatic sources said SADC leaders had become increasingly
frustrated that
since the 14-nation body called for regional mediation in
March last year
following a State-sanctioned opposition crackdown, there had
been no sign
that Mugabe was reforming. Mugabe’s decision not to attend the
summit was a
direct snub to Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, the SADC
chairperson who
called the meeting.
Mugabe’s main rival, MDC leader
Morgan Tsvangirai, claims he has won the
presidential vote by 50,3 percent.
Mugabe has refused to concede defeat
while withholding the presidential
results. Meanwhile, the so
-called war veterans have re-launched the campaign
to forcibly evict the
country’s commercial farmers and seize their land in a
populist re-election
drive ahead of an expected presidential election
re-run.
The land grab, which has gathered pace since Mugabe’s officials
repeatedly
hinted at a presidential run-off- this despite officials results
being
unknown - has courted international criticism.
In a further sign of
perceived defiance, Mugabe made a last-minute decision
to snub the
extra-ordinary summit Friday, whose invitation to the Lusaka
meeting he had
previously accepted.
“I think it reinforces the fact that he’s indifferent to
the views of SADC
and that’s relevant in our considerations,” a senior SADC
diplomat in Harare
told The Zimbabwe Times.
The meeting will, however, go
ahead as planned, and SADC officials said that
the prospect of tougher
action - perhaps a full suspension of Zimbabwe’s
membership - was on the
table.
All the delegations were careful, however, to insist that no decisions
had
been taken in advance of the meeting, which will examine the situation
in
Zimbabwe and the potential threat to regional stability.
The
Zimbabwe Times heard that Mugabe, livid over the last-minute
confirmation
of Tsvangirai’s attendance at the meeting, had pulled out
and decided
to send a low key delegation that flew to Lusaka Friday night.
MDC
secretary-general Tendai Biti said: “Morgan has been formally invited to
the
SADC meeting and he will definitely be there.”
The Zanu-PF delegation
will be headed by Justice, Legal and Parliamentary
Affairs minister Patrick
Chinamasa, who lost his parliamentary seat,
Foreign Affairs minister
Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, his permanent secretary
ambassador Joey Bimha and
Zanu (PF) legal affairs secretary Emmerson
Mnangwagwa. Bimha is a cousin of
the First Lady, Grace Mugabe.
On the eve of the extra-ordinary summit,
civic group, Zimbabwe Human Rights
NGO Forum issued a joint statement to the
SADC leaders together with the
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and the National
Association of NGO’s (NANGO)
warning against the imminent danger of violence
and the need for urgent
action if results continued to be
withheld.
The human rights groups said there was a pervasive atmosphere
of fear that
bloody violence would occur on a large scale during the period
ahead. The
civic groups appealed for calm and restraint and urged SADC
leaders to
intervene urgently in appropriate ways to persuade all parties,
particularly
Zanu-PF not to use violence in the coming period.
In
Harare, officials were unrepentant, and claimed that SADC’s invitation to
Mugabe had been an inappropriate message to a head of state.
Bimha,
derided the meeting as “a monumental waste of time and unnecessary."
But
Mwanawasa was quoted in Zambian press saying: “It was a perfectly normal
and
formal and courteous invitation.”
Zimbabwe Metro
By Staff ⋅ April 11,
2008
President Thabo Mbeki’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” on Zimbabwe has been
rejected by the new leadership of his own party.
The split between
the Union Buildings and Luthuli House on the issue became
painfully apparent
this week when Movement for Democratic Change leader
Morgan Tsvangirai chose
to meet African National Congress (ANC) president
Jacob Zuma and secretary
general Gwede Mantashe at ANC headquarters in
Johannesburg.
After the
meeting Zuma said from his homestead in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal,
that it was
wrong for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to keep the world in
suspense
about the outcome of the election.
In its last meeting in March, the
ANC’s national executive committee debated
the quiet diplomacy policy and
concluded that it had been ineffective in
dealing with the Zimbabwean
crisis.
The ANC has told its MPs who took part in the observer mission
for the
Southern African Development Community (SADC) to brief the party on
its
return.
Previously the group was only accountable to Parliament,
where the official
report of the 2005 elections was never
debated.
ANC treasurer general Mathews Phosa told a gathering of business
people in
Somerset West outside Cape Town that quiet diplomacy did not work
and
“Mugabe was using us”.
Mantashe told the M&G this week that
the withholding of the election results
by the ZEC is tantamount to a
“coup”.
“To me the proposals on putting together a government of national
unity make
sense. This is what we as the ANC would like to see
happening.”
This is a significant departure from the wait-and-see
approach adopted by
Mbeki. On Sunday, he told a group of ambassadors and
businesspeople in
London that the situation in Zimbabwe was “manageable” and
that people
should be prepared to “wait” for the outcome.
A source in
the Presidency said, however, that behind the scenes Mbeki is
“mulling over
this thing”.
“He sat around waiting for results from Zimbabwe all of last
week, which
actually made him late for his meetings in London. It has been
12 days now
[since the votes were counted]; we are all worried, we don’t
know why they
are waiting [to release them].”
The source said Mbeki
is constrained because “he is dealing with the
president of a
country”.
“As mediator you can’t talk too loud, you’re running the risk
of upsetting
the people involved. You don’t have as many limits when you are
the
president of a political party. You have more room to manoeuvre and
criticise.”
Mantashe said there were no plans to harmonise the
policies of the president
and the ANC and tackle the Zimbabwe issue jointly.
“The president must do
his thing as president of the country and play a role
as government; we must
have party-to-party relationships. ”
The ANC
released a statement on Friday calling for the urgent release of the
election results, while the government said the ZEC should explain the
delay.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad appealed to all
parties to
remain calm, because “when you lose patience you go to
war”.
The ANC has started to feel pressure from its alliance partners,
the
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African
Communist Party, about the party’s lack of decisive action on South Africa’s
northern neighbour.
Cosatu, which met the Zimbabwean Congress of
Trade Unions (ZCTU) in
Johannesburg this week, lambasted Mbeki for his
comments on in London about
the election.
It said that his “wait and
see” approach was sending a message to Mugabe “to
sit and do whatever to the
results”.
Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said the trade-union
federation welcomed
the shift in the ANC’s perspective. “It is one of the
best features of the
post-Polokwane outcome. There is an openness, a
willingness to discuss
things and a willingness to look at different points
of view,” he said.
Craven said quiet diplomacy had a role to play, but
that “because it was
quiet, we never knew what was being negotiated”. Cosatu
viewed as
unfortunate government statements that “the situation is not as
serious as
it is being made out to be”.
He added: “We hope we played
some part in influencing the ANC, but the
reality of Zimbabwe on the ground
probably went further in convincing them
that all is not well there. They
know now there is reason to doubt that
these elections are going to lead to
a democratic solution and that the
election may well have been
stolen.”
Comments
O: SADC and AU and UN and US and Britain
THIS
IS OUR THIRD AND FINAL COMMUNIQUE.
There is one thing that Mugabe has
never told SADC and AU and UN and US and
Britain. There were 69022 of us
freedom fighters in ZANLA and ZIPRA when we
returned from the war in 1979.
Our register today stands at 53347. This is
due to deaths in the wars in
Matebeleland and Midlands, Somalia, Mozambique,
DRC, and illness. Of the
53347, only 2470 belong to Mugabe, and they are the
ones causing all the
havoc in Zimbabwe today. The rest of us (50877) and the
tormented Zimbabwean
population have been watching and waiting. The MDC (M
• We do not support
Mugabe at all. NO.
• We and the tormented Zimbabwean population are
watching.
• They have already killed 3 of our men.
• They have destroyed
11 homesteads
• They are clinging to power illegally.
• We and the
tormented Zimbabwean population will hunt down each one of the
200 army
officers deployed countrywide and kill them and their 5 colleagues
each.
That will be about 1000 men dead.
• Mugabe will then send the Presidential
Guard to avenge those killings, and
each dead soldier and thug killed by our
people will be avenged by not less
than 15 lives. This will mean at least
15000 deaths.
• This will infuriate us and we will swiftly revenge this on
ZANU PF
supporters around us. We will kill as many as we can catch, we will
burn as
many homes as we can. We will destroy as much of their property as
we can.
• Mugabe’s army will revenge further and kill our men, women and
children
nation-wide. At least 500 in each constituency. That will mean
100000
deaths.
• We and the tormented Zimbabwean population will go all
out and blow up
Kariba Dam (that will kill thousands in the Zambezi Valley,
but it will
cripple the regime)
• We and the tormented Zimbabwean
population will destroy all electrical
power installations nationwide.
•
We and the tormented Zimbabwean population will destroy as much of the
rail
system as we can.
• We and the tormented Zimbabwean population will blow up
as many government
buildings as we can. We have tonnes of dynamite and
ammonium nitrate to do
this efficiently.
• We and the tormented
Zimbabwean population will render every road
unusable. We will blow up
anything seen crossing into or out of Zimbabwe
unless we are convinced they
are UN Peacekeepers.
• We and the tormented Zimbabwean population will blow
up and shoot down all
aircraft flying in Zimbabwean air-space unless we are
convinced they are UN
Peacekeepers.
• Then Zimbabwe will be free, at a
cost, because SADC and AU and UN and US
and Britain will not drive sense
into Mugabe and his regime that has
brutalized us and urinated onto our
faces.
I’m sure this is the only route that is left for us to take for
all
stakeholders to jump onboard. Nobody seems to understand our situation
until
bayoneted bodies, bullet-riddled bodies, burnt bodies, mutilated
bodies
litter the bushes, the villages, and the streets of Zimbabwe.
We
fought a bush war for 7 years. We can be so peaceful, as everyone now
knows,
but we can be very violent. We can fight MAD!
WE ARE FEARLESS, VERY FIERCE
FIGHTERS. WE HAVE STOCKPILES OF RIFLES AND
AMMUNITION. WE HAVE THE GRENADES.
WE HAVE THE TRUCKS. WE HAVE THE MEN. VERY
WELL TRAINED MEN. IN THE ARMED
FORCES. OUT OF IT. EVERYWHERE.
THIS WAR WILL BE VERY SWIFT. IN TWO WEEKS WE
WILL BE DONE. MUGABE CAN NOT
SUSTAIN A PROTRACTED WAR
ANYMORE.
Posted by Tendai Magorira | April 11, 2008,
4.39am
--------
Patience and waiting will not pay, its time to
defend your vote. Get Ready,
after Lusaka Summit, make sure Mugabe does not
return home. Its time for
action, its time to free Zimbabwe. 84 Year Old, My
Foot!! Simudzai Mureza
Wezimbabwe, Freedom is Coming Tomorrow! Its Time UP
ZANU PF and MUgabe!! Its
time to declare war!
Posted by Simbarashe |
April 11, 2008, 5:37 am
--------------
President George Bush
please do to the out going president of Zimbabwe that
which U did to late
Hussein,before it is too late in that country.Posted by
okeke francis |
April 11, 2008, 8:06 a
----------------
THE IS THE TIME FOR THE PEOPLE OF
ZIMBABWE TO TAKE THE LAW INTO THEIR HANDS
AND THROUGH THE DEFEATED OLD FOOL
IN THE PERSON OF MUGABE AWAY FROM THAT
COUNTRY HE THOUGHT IS HIS
OWN.
Posted by okeke francis | April 11, 2008, 8:13
am
----------------
RAISE MY HANDS, EYES FIXED IN THE OPEN SKYS,SPIRIT
REACHING THE THRONE OF
THE ALMIGHTY AND PRAY.
May God heal our land,
Zimbabwe in the name of your son Jesus Christ, who
died for us all. As you
have said;Because of the crying of the
oppressed,because of the suffering of
the poor;You will come on your own and
raise them and put them on the high
and strong places which they yearn to
be.
May your Holy Spirit be in each
one of us and build peace amongst all of us.
For what profit will it do to
us to spill our own blood for things which
Christ Jesus has already died
for. Vegeance is in Thy hands. I pursue and
pray for peace and justice to
come from on high. So help us, Jehova, to hold
back our anger and stop
bloodshed. Give us your Holy Spirit, to tell the
devil to get away from
us.Guid us, be with us in these turbulant and trying
times. In the name of
Jesus Christ - AMEN
Posted by ishmaelbu | April 11, 2008, 8:22
am
----------
This is interesting:
Ballot boxes to be reopened 11
April - without required notification to
observers
swradioafrica.com
Is there any reasonable suspicion that
votes were stolen from Mr Mugabe?
Zimbabwe has an Electoral Commission
[ZEC] still appointed entirely by
Robert Mugabe, from a shortlist picked
predominantly by his party.
Zimbabwe Police have started arresting ZEC
election officials countrywide,
alleging they fraudulently deprived Mr Mugabe
of votes during vote counting
or compiling in the recent Harmonised
Elections.
If so, they robbed Mugabe in front of police & numerous
other witnesses –
without it being detected for a week.
Whatever red
herrings people may try to draw now across the trail,
all the counting was
done in front of numerous witnesses including the
police and ZANU-Pf’s
polling agents at every polling station and completed
by lunchtime on Sunday
30th March 2008;
And over the next couple of days, all the compiling was
done in front of
numerous witnesses including the police and ZANU-Pf’s
polling agents at in
every ward and every constituency and the result there
in each of the 4
elections was recorded and put up outside.
And no
complaints were publicly made, until last Friday when ZANU-Pf had to
explain
to Robert Mugabe – on the basis ostensibly only of their OWN polling
agents
returns, as the official ones are still officially secret – why he
lost, and
even did so much worse than his party candidates in many areas.
The
counting was done at each polling station.
Present at every count were:
11
ZEC officials,
Accredited observers [all approved by a government minister
first]
Agents for each candidate [with a ZANU Pf agent, inside & out]
–
and
Police - as Mugabe had personally changed the electoral law just
before the
election to put his police inside the stations.
Other agents,
observers, public etc watched from a short distance outside.
No-body was
allowed in or out during the count.
Then 6 copies were made of every
result, from each of the 4 ballot boxes in
turn [Presidential, senate, House
of assembly, Local Authority.]
They were signed not just by ZEC officials,
but by party agents – including
ZANU-Pfs
One signed copy of each return
was then put up publicly outside.
All 5 others were sent on to the ward
centre, then the constituency centre,
then the command centre.
How could
any theft from him have happened so publicly, and been undetected,
unreported
for so long?
Single ZEC officials are being arrested by police from
around the country
for unlawfully robbing Robert Mugabe of votes, before any
official result is
released.
1. Everything was done at every level
with many other people watching - the
counting of the ballot papers and the
collating. For any theft or fraud to
have occurred at any stage, many other
people would have needed to be
accomplices, including ZANU-Pf party agents
and police. Why have they not
ALL been arrested?
2. Every result was
recorded in multiple copies, and signed by Z-Pf agents.
Every polling station
result was put up publicly. 5 copies were kept for
ZEC.
Can anyone hope to
defraud Robert Mugabe in quintuplicate?
3. The number of copies made of
every Constituency return is unknown, but
can be easily discovered. One was
put up outside for the public for each
election. Winners were announced. The
time when all this happened at the
constituency level can also be proved.
Most, if not all, were finished by
Sunday or Monday.
4. Long after
each local announcement of the Parliamentary seats, ZEC also
announced the
results at its National Command Centre. It said its delay was
while it
checked each one. ZEC is well staffed and has computers. If a local
official
cheated or perhaps made a mistake in entering or adding any
returns -
undetected by all those others watching him - ZEC would have
discovered this
before it made its own public announcement for that seat.
Yet it is ZEC’s
public announcements that are being disputed now by ZANU-Pf.
If there was any
fraud or error in any tally by some official, it was an
error ZEC also made;
yet no-one from its National Command Centre has been
charged.
5. While
every Constituency result has been broadcast, all ZEC presidential
results
remain secret. Like ZANU-Pf, the police should not have any official
records
of that vote yet. Can they explain on what evidence therefore are
they now
arresting any ZEC official for theft of votes or defrauding Robert
Mugabe?
Are they too relying on the results reported by ZANU-Pfs own agents?
Has ZEC
laid a complaint against some officials, rather than merely
rectifying any
errors?
With so public a process, there surely can be no reasonable
suspicion that
Robert Mugabe has been robbed by anyone. Why now open the
ballot boxes?
There seems to be no credible grounds to do so, but there is
every reason to
fear that the real reason for doing this is to suddenly
“find” more votes
for Mugabe inside, in boxes kept guarded only by his
officials, sealed with
only their seals.
Before ZEC does that, it must
inform every accredited observer, and let them
also attend. It must show
these observers all the polling station returns,
and let them take copies of
that, and explain why it thinks there are any
grounds to reopen and recount,
when ZANU-Pf was present at the time and made
no complaint for so
long.
Or it must tell observers it received complaints within the allowed
time of
48 hours, but ignored them and announced the results anyway; and
explain why
neither it nor ZANU-Pf told observers that they had any
complaints.
Regardless of any recount, every winner announced at the
constituency centre
remains the winner unless and until that result is set
aside by the
Electoral Court after petition & trial. ZEC cannot change
it. A recount
cannot change it.
Section 66(4) of the Electoral Act
specifies that.
……………..
Zim ballot box reopening & recounts to
begin 11 April - without required
notification to observers
You
observed the polling and other aspects of Zimbabwe’s harmonised
elections as
an accredited observer, after approval to do this from a
Government Minister.
Observer groups who had been critical in the past were
rejected.
International approval was sought from the remainder.
You were invited to
observe as part of efforts to give the government
legitimacy. However it
seems ZEC is now ignoring the law and international
protocols and planning
recounts in your absence.
We draw your attention to:
- 2 known ballot
box recounts planned for tomorrow
- Your right to be informed in advance by
ZEC of any recount
- Your right to be present
- Your right to be told why
it considers this justified.
ZEC has told the winning MPs that ballot box
recounts will be done tomorrow
in Mutare West and Chimanimani West. It may
also be planning these
elsewhere.
We request you to urgently advise us
if you have been informed of this at
all.
Section 67A of the Electoral
Act allows a recount only if a complaint is
made by a losing candidate or
party within 48 hours [no credible indication
of that] or on ZEC’s own
initiative.
In either case there must be reasonable grounds to believe there
was a
miscount.
The arrests of isolated officials do not justify that, as
any error or fraud
here would have needed to have a lot of people being
complicit in it,
including police and party agents.
Section 67A also
specifies:
(5) Where the Commission orders a recount of votes in terms of
this section,
the Commission shall specify—
(a) the polling stations whose
votes are to be recounted and, where
appropriate, the votes that are to be
recounted; and
(b) the date on which, and the place and time at which the
recount is to
take place; and
(c) the procedure to be adopted for the
recount;
and shall take all necessary steps to inform accredited observers
and all
political parties and candidates that contested the election of its
decision
and of the date, time and place of the recount.
(6) Accredited
observers and representatives of candidates and political
parties that
contested the election shall be entitled to be present at any
recount ordered
in terms of this section.
The polling process had precautions against fraud
during counting and
adding, with vote counting done by 11 officials in the
presence of party
agents, police and observers, and each result then being
signed and posted
at the polling station.
Any fraud at either stage
would have required the complicity of numerous
people including the
police.
Every polling station record was made with 6 signed copies &
under such
supervision that no-one could have hoped to commit a fraud in
counting or
collating undetected.
• No complaints were heard from
ZANU-PF during this process.
• Various observers praised the process.
•
ZEC delayed its own announcements confirming constituency results for
days,
saying it was checking all the results before doing so.
• When it announced
them, ZANU-PF and state media still voiced no criticism.
Although secrecy
and delay have now clouded ZEC’s official Presidential
results, the public
statements by Mr Mugabe’s most loyal supporters have
made it clear that they
know he lost. Only the margin is open to any doubt.
But suddenly individual
ZEC officials around the country are now being
arrested on charges of
defrauding Mr Mugabe.
And as suddenly the ruling party has started
challenging the announced
results, and ZEC has phoned some new MPs to say it
will be recounting.
Due to the other new precautions, the law does not
protect ballot boxes
well. The only seal allowed on them was the official
one. That is an
unsigned plastic seal that can be readily removed and
replaced, with little
chance of detection. No-one knows who has had the boxes
since the poll; and
as there were no complaints, no-one else has been
observing them. Their
contents may have been completely switched by now. ZEC
refused to disclose
how many ballot papers it had printed, and reports were
received in advance
of duplicated serial numbers.
ZEC has not said why
it wants to reopen boxes, or what boxes it intends to
open. ZEC can only do
this if it has good reason to believe the first count
was wrong. With so many
people watching and no reports of complaints at the
time, and the observers
endorsing that aspect, how can it have any such
grounds?
ZEC only
accredited observers approved by Mr Mugabe’s Minister. ZEC and his
government
then welcomed and publicized any endorsement by them of the
election and
counting as ‘credible’. Yet ZEC now ‘doubts’ it and wants to
reopen ballot
boxes without advising them.
Zimbabwe’s law obliges ZEC to tell them and
also entitles all observers to
be present whenever any box is opened, so they
must be given enough notice.
Courtesy dictates the same, to let them observe
what they allegedly missed,
and apparently received no complaints about,
before.
It is our belief that Zimbabwe cannot use selected observers to
try and give
its elections credibility, then U-turn and say its official
results were not
credible after all, and reopen boxes in an effort to “prove”
this - in the
observers’ absence.
Not just ZEC’s credibility but the
future credibility of the observers
themselves would inevitably be destroyed
by any such action.
IF ZEC has any plausible reason to reopen any boxes,
ZEC in our view is
obliged now by the electoral law to tell all those
observers who endorsed
the processes that it has had cause to rethink, and
that it wants to
re-examine the records, in their presence, with all the
other details
required.
It is also required by the Administrative Justice
Act to explain to those
observers why it has had cause to rethink.
If that
is not happening, please make this and your views known.
Local observers
and others with a right to attend have not been
informed
yet.
Posted by Sekuru Jecha | April 11,
2008
-----------------
a.. ishmaelbu,
Prayer is always a good idea,
but just praying without any actions other
than praying is kind of silly I
think. If you aren’t willing to actually DO
anything and make an effort why
should God? Why expect Him to do ALL the
work? It is a bit unfair. God helps
if people take at least SOME initiative
to solve their own
problems.
If somebody asks their neighbour to push his car up a hill, is
it fair if
the person then sits down and has a drink while the neighbour is
expected to
push the car uphill by himself? Would YOU be OK doing
that?
Posted by Jonah A | April 11, 2008, 9:40
am
----------
The picture painted by Tendai Magorira could be a reality
quite soon. I can
see it happening, and it would be unfortunate, but
inevitable.This is the
only way that I have known dictators to go away.As I
have said before Mugabe’s
greatest enemy is the situation of the economy.
This will destroy him. The
sooner he recognizes this the better.His options
are getting narrower and
narrower if at all he has any left.
Posted
by Sekuru Jecha | April 11, 2008, 9:50 am
--------------------
God will
not help while you sit on your laurels. Mwari haapi neruoko. Stand
up
children of the soil. Reclaim your freedom from ZANU PF (ZATO PF -
Zimbabwe
African Thieves Association). Get up and be counted. Do everything
and
anything you can to liberate yourself. The world does not care. SADC is
useless. Britain and George dont care. Mbeki is smiling all the way and the
rest of Africa have their own problems. People have died, killed by Robert.
It is time to get yours back.
Posted by Zindoga | April 11, 2008,
10:04 am
A coup d’état (also coup) is the sudden, overthrowing of a
government by a part of the state establishment - usually the military - to
replace the branch of the stricken government, either with another civil
government or with a military government.
Politically, the coup d’état is a type of political
engineering, generally violent (hence "strike", "blow"; French "coup"), but not always, yet differing
from a revolution (by a larger, armed group to effect violent, radical change to
the political system) in that the change is to the government, not the form of
government…
…The coup d’état succeeds if its opponents
fail to thwart the usurpers, allowing them to consolidate their positions,
obtain the surrender of the overthrown government or acquiescence of the
populace and the surviving armed forces, and thus claim legitimacy. Coups d’état typically use the power
of the existing government for the takeover. As Edward Luttwak remarks in Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook:
A coup consists of the infiltration of
a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to
displace the government from its control of the remainder. In this sense,
the use of either military or another organized force is not the defining
feature of a coup d'État.
(Source:
Wikipedia)
When we learn of coups d’etat in the world, it is normally punctuated with the sound of rifle fire and explosions. And some of the most harrowing violence we might ever see.
The coup d’etat carried out by Mugabe and his party with the support of the armed forces is probably the quietest ever carried out on the face of this earth.
Up until
(And Zimbabwean courts agree with me, finding that the election was influenced heavily by voter intimidation and political thuggery, but that Morgan Tsvangirai had indeed been defeated by means other than a free and fair ballot. The court, however, stopped short of ordering a re-run, or ordering Mugabe from office, as, they ruled, Mugabe has already taken office!)
So this time around, the country's proletariat went to the polls thirteen days ago, and four days later we were told that the Movement for Democratic Change had won the majority in Parliament.
Since then we have heard little of the Presidential election results. Although we have heard much about the results. Doesn’t quite make sense, does it?
And the war of words have flown thick and fast
ever since. The Deputy Minister of Information, Bright Matonga, has continually
played up the buoyant spirit of Mugabe’s party, and has even given time to the
much hated and vilified BBC. Just this afternoon, Matonga has stated that he
does not understand the fuss about the Presidential election result, as the
numbers are in the public domain. Not so far as I am aware - because then we
would, in all likelihood, be witnessing the swearing in of a new President in
Mugabe maintains his stance as President of Zimbabwe, even though, on his own party’s admission, the election is due to go to a second round run-off - and although the MDC has done the mathematics based on the public figures posted outside the polling stations, and consider Morgan Tsvangirai to be the duly democratically elected President of Zimbabwe.
But there are a number of issues in his way before he will be sworn in as holder of that prestigious office - indeed, he would be the first democratically elected person to that office… And I have no doubt in my mind, that when all is said and done, Morgan Tsvangirai will hold that office.
First of all, the MDC has to get ZANU PF to accede to the releasing of the results. That, in itself, will be a veritable minefield.
The election administration was overseen by an ostensibly autonomous Electoral Commission - appointed by Mugabe himself. That negates the word ‘autonomous’… Thirteen days after the close of polling stations, we wait for something to give - primarily from the Zimbabwean High Court, where a Justice is due to give a ruling on Monday.
It took the same court four days to acknowledge,
after much legal argument, that the application for the release of said results
was indeed ‘urgent’… Cast your mind
back to 2002, and you will maybe recall that the results were released in just
three hours. As at
The Presidential elections are obviously known to ZANU PF, who repeatedly state that a run-off is the next step, but they are not telling…
The function of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has been taken over by ZANU PF - well, they will tell you, “the government”, and have dismantled the election command centre and have whisked away the ballot boxes to an as yet undisclosed location. The “government” are now taking any decisions in the stead of the ZEC.
Constitutionally, which obviously does not apply to ZANU PF or Mugabe, any Parliamentary seat recounts have to be requested within 48 hours of the publishing of those seat results. Given that the last seat results were made public on Wednesday last week, and today we discover that 5 seats are being recounted - with a further 9 under consideration - we must question under what regulation, statue or law are these to be reconsidered?
The authority for these recounts is wrongfully in the hands of the “government” and therefore any decision will be based on ZANU PF wants and needs.
They have been stalwart in their resistance to publishing the Presidential election results - their legal representative stating in court that releasing them would be ‘dangerous’.
I also was taken aback this morning to discover that Mugabe had re-appointed his cabinet to office, seven of which are people who lost their seats in the Parliamentary election! The announcement was made by Patrick Chinamasa, now a civilian in every sense of the word, having lost his seat in the Parliamentary ballot… who now masquerades under his former title of Minister of Justice (now there is an oxymoron!).
Or should that just be ‘moron’?
So we have an illegally parked President, and a resident cabinet that is not the people’s choice.
Add this together with the ongoing farm invasions up and down the country - even though the dubious ‘leader’ of the war veterans states that no invasions are taking place - this would then lend credence to the document that was published on the internet this week that the invasions are being conducted by appointed serving soldiers masquerading as veterans.
This would also suggest that the country is, in reality, being run by the military junta of Constantine Chiwenga (army), Perence Shiri (air force), Augustine Chihuri (police) and Paradzai Zimondi (prisons). According to quite a few articles on the internet, and it is very difficult to chose any one that has definitive proof for their stories - not because of their predilection to printing false stories, but because of the wall of silence from the ZANU PF/military fortress - that Mugabe was prepared to stand down and cede power to Morgan Tsvangirai, but this was stopped by the chiefs who do not want to face the music for their actions over the last three decades.
Articles state that Mugabe’s wife, Grace, had attempted to convince him (and the security force chiefs) that it was not worth his children’s sanity to continue. His sons were being bullied at school over their father’s actions.
Armed soldiers and police patrol the streets of the cities and towns, and the election result release has hit somewhat of a lopsided stalemate.
ZANU PF, no longer the ‘ruling party’, maintains control of what little still exists of the economy, and, perhaps, more importantly, the Reserve Bank, seen as an integral part of Mugabe’s rule. Once Mugabe is displaced, I believe that the full enormity of the financial damage of his rule will be uncovered, leaving the new authority with little option but to pursue criminal proceedings against the former President and his hierarchy.
This is why his military chiefs are adamant that Mugabe make a stand.
Their biggest fear is the inside of a prison cell.
We have to admit, that sheer stubbornness and the
hunger for power and absolute control, has resulted in the quietest coup d’etat ever in
Robb WJ Ellis
11 April 2008
Robb WJ Ellis
Derby, Derbyshire, United
Kingdom
Websites: The Bearded Man
(incorporating "ZNU Podcast"), Messages From Zimbabwe, Mandebvhu Talks "Zimbabwe", Without Honour and Ellistrate &
RobinArt.
12 April 2008
By Never
Kadungure (Political Editor)
Zimbabwe's ruling party is battling to
protect its leader President Robert
Mugabe from scrutiny after recent
performances in public have shown the
84-year old mentally unstable and
unable to handle pressure.
Sources told Nehanda Radio the shock defeats
in both parliamentary and
presidential elections to the opposition MDC have
made Mugabe even more
deranged and he seems not to be in charge of his
mental faculties.
'Effective Sunday 30 March the Joint Operations Command
(JOC) have been
running the country up until such time Mugabe recovers or
demonstrates he is
ready to continue as President,' the source
said.
Army General Constantine Chiwenga, Air Marshall Perence Shiri,
Prisons Chief
Paradzai Zimondi, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, CIO
boss Happyton
Bonyongwe and Major General Philip Sibanda from the army
presented Mugabe
with the shock news of his defeat at state house on the
Sunday after the
poll.
Mugabe threw a fit and demanded Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairman
Justice George Chiweshe manipulate the
figures in his favour. The former
soldier turned judge however refused,
throwing Zanu PF's entire game plan
into the political water.
Nehanda
Radio understands Mugabe on the advice of First Lady Grace Mugabe
contemplated resigning as President but was over-ruled by the army Generals
who are said to be using the ageing dictator as a human shield. 'Mugabe is a
virtual hostage to the situation now,' we were told.
As if to confirm
the uncertainty over Mugabe's mental health, Zanu PF
bigwigs talked him out
of attending the SADC emergency summit at the
weekend, fearing he would
embarass himself amongst his peers. Foreign
Affairs Minister Simbarashe
Mumbengegwi will instead attend to defend the
government against accusations
they are delibarately withholding the results
after losing the election. never@nehandaradio.com
.
Nehanda Radio: Zimbabwe's first 24 hour internet radio news
channel.