Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is expected to meet Mozambican leader Armando Guebuza this week as his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) appeals to southern African leaders to intervene in its political dispute with President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF.
An MDC spokesman said the meeting with Guebuza was part of a diplomatic offensive by the party under which it sought to enlist Southern African Development Community (SADC) support in its fight to break a deadlock with ZANU PF over outstanding power-sharing issues.
“The party has decided to ask SADC for its assistance in breaking the deadlock and the expected meeting with President Guebuza will be a crucial first step towards enlisting the support of the region,” the spokesman told APA on Monday.
Tsvangirai is expected to travel to Maputo on Tuesday for the meeting with the Mozambican leader who chairs the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation which facilitated last year’s power-sharing agreement between ZANU PF and the MDC.
Tsvangirai last Friday declared a deadlock in efforts to resolve sticking issues affecting the country’s eight-month-old coalition government and announced that his party was withdrawing from the power-sharing regime until all problems are addressed.
He said the MDC was suspending cooperation with ZANU PF and would boycott all cabinet meetings until outstanding issues from a power-sharing agreement between the two parties are resolved.
The outstanding GPA issues include Mugabe’s unilateral appointment of central bank governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General Johannes Tomana as well as delays by the 85-year-old leader in swearing in provincial governors and ambassadors several months after an agreement was reached on the appointments.
Tsvangirai warned that if the constitutional crisis escalated his party would call for the holding of free and fair election to be conducted by the SADC and the African Union under United Nations supervision.
SADC and the AU are the guarantors to the GPA which was brokered by former South African president Thabo Mbeki in September last year.
The fresh crisis in Zimbabwe comes after a court this week ordered the prison detention of Roy Bennett, a senior MDC official, and ruled that he should stand trial on terrorism charges.
Source African Press Agency
