/ 10 December 2008

World leaders say it’s time for Mugabe to go

United States President George Bush on Tuesday called for an end to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s regime amid allegations from the Zimbabwean government that the West is pouncing on a cholera epidemic to plan an invasion.

Bush joined an increasingly large group of leaders calling on Mugabe (84) to step down. French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday also called for Mugabe’s resignation, as have British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, European Commission foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, among others.

”We urge others from the region to step up and join the growing chorus of voices calling for an end to Mugabe’s tyranny,” Bush said, adding it was ”time for Robert Mugabe to go” and pledging US support to help rebuild the country once he’s gone.

Zimbabwe is in the throes of a cholera epidemic caused by the collapse of health, water and sewerage systems. Hard-pressed Zimbabweans, half of whom (over five million) already require food aid, are succumbing at an alarming rate to what is normally an easily treatable disease.

The United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday that at least 589 people had died and over 13 960 people been infected so far in a cholera outbreak that began in sewage-drenched poor urban townships in August. The real death toll is thought to be much higher, because many people die at home and their deaths are never reported.

A group of senior United Nations officials arrived in Zimbabwe on Monday to help coordinate the government and aid agencies’ response to the epidemic.

Last week, the regime finally gave in to local and international pressure and appealed for international help to contain the epidemic.

But by Tuesday, the government was accusing Western governments of using the epidemic as a front for intervention by the UN Security Council.

”They are dead set on ensuring that there is an invasion of Zimbabwe,” George Charamba, Mugabe’s spokesperson, was quoted as saying by state media on Tuesday.

He would not be surprised, he said, if the British and Americans tried to ”spring a mission” involving the UN.

The cholera outbreak is but one manifestation of a wholesale breakdown in state infrastructure caused by a severe economic crisis generally blamed on poor government policies.

As taps dry up, Zimbabweans have been forced to scrounge water from unprotected sources, including rivers and shallow wells contaminated by sewage.

The health crisis is compounded by the closure of state hospitals because of a medics’ strike. Hyperinflation of at least 231-million percent has made their pay worthless.

The Red Cross said in Geneva it was feeding health workers in some clinics to keep them on the job. The UN and the Red Cross also said they were working to tank in clean water and dig wells.

Zimbabwe’s African neighbours are still pushing a government of national unity, in which Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would share power, as the best solution to the crisis.

A South African government delegation has been in Zimbabwe since Monday to try to nudge the two parties towards a final agreement on the unity government and assess the humanitarian crisis.

The British Foreign Office minister responsible for Africa, Mark Malloch-Brown, will also travel to South Africa later this week to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe, the government in London said on Tuesday.

Abduction
The diplomatic push comes amid a renewed campaign of state repression against the MDC and civil society.

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s spokesperson George Sibotshiwe said suspected state agents hijacked and abducted an MDC official, Gandhi Mudzingwa, on Monday while he was driving in Harare.

The reported abduction brings to at least 19 the number of MDC supporters and civil society activists to have been whisked away in recent weeks by unidentified armed agents.

The MDC suspects his abductors were from the feared Central Intelligence Organisation, which is also suspected of the abduction on Wednesday last week of Jestina Mukoko, director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project non-governmental organisation.

A High Court judge on Tuesday ordered police to search all areas within their jurisdiction for Mukoko, whose whereabouts are still unknown. The police have said they know nothing of her abduction.

Some analysts believe that Mugabe may again be trying to ”soften up” the opposition in advance of possible fresh elections.

Mugabe, who placed second to Tsvangirai in the last credible presidential elections in March and later smashed his way to an uncontested victory in a violent run-off, last week told a group of supporters to ”be ready” for new elections. – Sapa-DPA