A ministerial team from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is expected to visit Zimbabwe this week to discuss a political crisis that has rocked the country’s fragile coalition government.
The visit follows last week’s diplomatic offensive by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai whose party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), suspended cooperation with President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF two weeks ago following a disagreement over outstanding power-sharing issues.
The diplomatic offensive saw Tsvangirai meeting SADC chairperson and Democratic Republic of Congo leader Joseph Kabila, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza and South African President Jacob Zuma as part of efforts to garner regional support in his fight to get Mugabe to commit to an agreement signed last year.
The state-run Herald newspaper however said Monday that the proposed SADC visit had nothing to do with Tsvangirai’s diplomatic offensive, insisting that the ministerial trip had already been arranged last month.
Reports at the weekend said the SADC leaders had agreed to convene an extraordinary summit on Thursday to discuss the new Zimbabwean crisis which has seen the MDC refusing to attend cabinet meetings or cooperating with ZANU PF.
The two parties and a smaller faction of the MDC led by Arthur Mutambara formed a coalition government last February.
Source African Press Agency
