ANC team arrives to observe Zimbabwe polls

Five members of South Africa’s governing African National Congress party have arrived in Harare, the first group of foreign observers in Zimbabwe to monitor the March 31 vote, an electoral official said on Wednesday.

“Indeed the South Africans are the first ones to arrive of those coming from outside the country,” said Tarisai Manzonzo, spokesperson for the Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC).

“Otherwise, there are other foreigners we have already accredited, the members of foreign diplomatic missions based in Zimbabwe,” he said.

The South Africans are from the African National Congress (ANC), a partner of the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which on Tuesday launched the first in a series of planned protests to highlight appeals for democracy in elections in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe, under close scrutiny in the region to measure whether it will hold free and fair elections, has invited 45 foreign observer teams for the parliamentary polls.

Harare has been under pressure to allow foreign observers to monitor the March 31 parliamentary polls, which will be closely watched as a test of President Robert Mugabe’s government’s pledge to hold a free and transparent vote.

The government has meanwhile dismissed reports that it has deliberately not invited the South Africa Development Community (SADC) parliamentary forum.

It said Zimbabwe has extented an invitation to SADC and that included all SADC bodies.

“[The] SADC parliamentary forum cannot merit an invitation on its own as if it’s a sovereign entity,” said George Charamba, the goverment’s secretary for information. - Sapa-AFP