Zimbabwean security agents arrested a senior leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Friday ahead of a swearing-in ceremony for a new unity cabinet in which he was due to take a post, a party official said.
If confirmed, the arrest will increase political tensions between President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and new Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC soon after they ended a long deadlock in negotiations and agreed to implement a power-sharing deal.
”Roy Bennett was arrested a few minutes ago at Charles Prince Airport. I am not sure whether he was arriving or leaving,” Ian Makone, a senior MDC official, told Reuters.
Police were not immediately available for comment.
Bennett, the MDC treasurer general, was nominated as deputy minister of agriculture by Tsvangirai.
Bennett has been living in exile in South Africa after fleeing the country about two years ago because police wanted to question him in connection with the discovery of an arms cache in eastern Zimbabwe.
Mugabe and Tsvangirai agreed last September to share power, but the deal stalled for months as they haggled over the allocation of cabinet posts, stirring doubts over whether the old foes can work together to bring in foreign aid and investment.
Cholera deaths rise
Meanwhile, cholera is being carried by rivers and streams in Zimbabwe, fuelling the uncontrolled outbreak that has now infected 73 585 people and left 3 525 dead, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.
The latest figures for the outbreak that has thrived since August 2008, especially in the country’s impoverished, undernourished and neglected rural areas, were dated February 12, the United Nations health agency said.
At the beginning of the week, the WHO and the Zimbabwean Health Ministry had recorded 69 553 cases including 3 400 deaths.
”Cholera is still not under control,” said WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib.
However, she revealed that an onsite survey by the central cholera control team in several districts found that waterways and wells are infected with the potentially deadly bacteria.
Chaib said they ”confirmed that shallow wells, rivers and streams were the most likely source of infection”.
That made it essential to distribute water purification tablets, clean water supplies, and soap directly to families and households to stop them getting infected when they washed, cooked or drank water, she added.
The WHO also reiterated fears that floods in the rainy season would hamper movement of both health workers and of people seeking treatment.
”There’s also the lack of transport, the scarcity of food and the fact that health workers are paid very little if they are at all,” Chaib told journalists.
However, the WHO spokesperson said it was unclear to what degree the outbreak in Zimbabwe was fuelling those in neighbouring countries, where cholera was often already endemic.– Reuters, AFP