Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is finally cracking under relentless pressure by African leaders to meet opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and solve the economic and political crisis in the Southern African country, say experts.
Mugabe, who has ridiculed and belittled Tsvangirai as a Western stooge in the past, stunned Zimbabweans this week by saying he was ready to meet the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader for unprecedented face-to-face talks to stop
Zimbabwe’s further decline into ruin.
Zanu-PF and MDC sources confirmed this week that South African President Thabo Mbeki and Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo were behind the latest initiative to get the two bitter foes at the same table and find ways to rescue the Zimbabwean economy.
Speaking on national television on Monday, Mugabe, however, once again put a damper on the proposed talks by saying Tsvangirai had to first acknowledge that he was the duly elected president of the country and, therefore, stop court action challenging his rule.
Mugabe walked out of South African-brokered talks with Tsvangirai last year after insisting that the opposition leader drop a court case challenging the Zanu-PF ‘s controversial re-election in the hotly contested 2002 poll.
Tsvangirai this week said he had no intention of dropping the court case, which is is expected to be heard in the Harare high court within two months.
”We have not changed our position. We remain committed to pressing our legal challenge which is our legal right,” Tsvangirai, who is on trial for allegedly plotting to assassinate Mugabe, told journalists in Harare this week in response to the Zimbabwean president’s statement.
Mugabe also hinted that he may soon be ready to retire and for the first time admitted he was keen to meet his old enemy, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to regain acceptance by the West.
The 79-year-old Mugabe, who insists he is ”as fit as a fiddle”, said he may soon leave office as his land redistribution programme was almost complete. ”We are getting to a stage where we shall say ‘ah fine, we have settled this matter and people can retire,”’ he said.
Mugabe, however, ruled out the possibility of a transitional government as demanded by Western powers such as the United States and Britain, saying he was the democratically elected Zimbabwean president and the US could ”go hang”.
Mugabe, who was surprisingly very candid in this rare appearance, also announced that he was not against the succession issue being debated openly within his ruling party.
He has in the past castigated any talk of his departure from office and has ruthlessly suppressed young Turks in Zanu-PF who were considered ambitious enough to openly discuss their intention to succeed him.
”But when one looks ahead and starts clandestinely to organise in groups or in tribal lines or in personal lines that bring conflict in the party system, then the idea [of succession] loses its sound basis. We encourage open debate rather than meetings endowed in secrecy,” he said, in reference to reports that some factions were already building up within Zanu-PF.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe was this week paralysed by a national three-day stayaway that started on Wednesday and was organised by the country’s largest trade union, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), to protest against the recent fuel price increase.
Public transport ground to a standstill and banks and shops remained shut throughout the country as workers and employers heeded the ZCTU call to stay at home until the state revised the 300% fuel price increase.
The Zimbabwean government last week hiked the price of petrol and diesel citing rising procurement costs encountered by the state-owned National Oil Procurement Company of Zimbabwe (Noczim) and the need to ensure that newly licensed black fuel importers become viable.
Oil experts, however, say that while the price increase was inevitable, rampant corruption at Noczim had also worsened the situation and that the price could stabilise if the government abandoned the parastatal and allowed for the free importation of the commodity.
The fuel price hike has incensed Zimbabweans, who are reeling from the effects of runaway inflation — the March figures were recorded at 228% — unemployment, a crumbling social service and mounting poverty.
The ZCTU warned the government that it was considering indefinite nationwide mass action unless the state revised the fuel price by April 25.