Talks between the MDC and Zanu-PF have broken down – now negotiators are looking to their leaders for help.
The Zimbabwean government this week threw a spanner into President Thabo Mbeki’s frantic efforts to market the troubled African continent ahead of next month’s Group of Eight (G8) summit in Canada.
As British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Canadian counterpart, Jean Chretien, were assuring the South African leader of their support for extra aid to Africa at Downing Street on Tuesday, President Robert Mugabe failed to save the talks about a government of national unity in Zimbabwe from collapse.
Mugabe met talk facilitators Professor Adebayo Adedeji of Nigeria and South Africa’s Kgalema Motlanthe after the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the ruling Zanu-PF failed to resume the talks on Monday.
In a letter to the facilitators the Zanu-PF team leader, Minister of Justice Patrick Chinamasa, cited the MDC’s high court application to have the March election nullified as its reason for withdrawal and asked for a further adjournment. This led the MDC team leader, secretary general Welshman Ncube, to threaten ”mass action” and ”strikes”.
Motlanthe and Adedeji will now consult their leaders on what to do next.
Analysts blamed the collapse of the talks on the ruling party and both parties’ different world outlooks. The MDC and Zanu-PF have diametrically opposed economic views with the latter determined to look East and shut all doors to the West.
Mugabe’s conduct during the pre-election period and subsequent victory was condemned by the United States, the European Union, Southern African parliamentarians and the Commonwealth, which later suspended Zimbabwe.
Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who in the past three years have refused to publicly criticise Mugabe, have been under pressure to market the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), the Africa Millennium Recovery Plan and Africa in general.
Their decision to facilitate the talks between Mugabe and the opposition is largely seen as an effort to spruce up the region’s image before the G8 summit on June 26 and 27.
The $64-billion Nepad programme, which offers relief in return for conflict resolution and an end to graft, will be high on the agenda at the summit. Africa is classified as the poorest continent with close to 340-million people living in dire poverty. Analysts this week said Mugabe’s squirming off the diplomatic hook was a disservice to the pair’s efforts to win international relief for the ”ailing continent”.
”Clearly the two will be the losers because they have so much to achieve,” said Brian Raftopolous of the University of Zimbabwe’s department of development studies. ”Above all they have always been against the punishment of Mugabe so they must get him to reform. As initiators of the dialogue they will be the first losers followed by Mugabe, even though he pretends to be unperturbed. He is subtracting more friends from those left.”
Chinamasa this week said his party had no idea when the talks would resume and was instead concentrating on preparing for the MDC petition hearing.
”Our position is very clear. We are not going to enter into talks and then run to the courts to defend ourselves. I spent a lot of time studying their [the MDC’s] petition and so I have no more time for negotiation.”
On April 12 the MDC petitioned the high court to nullify Zanu-PF’s victory. Earlier this month it applied to be provided with the material used in the election.
The talk facilitators expressed hope that they would bring the two parties back to the negotiating table again.
”The petition has added a new dimension to the dialogue and we have to address it. The facilitation continues. There is nothing that is impossible.”
But the MDC’s threats to resort to strikes could further dent Mbeki’s hopes for Nepad’s success.
Zimbabwe is regarded as an important trading partner by most Nepad member states.
- The Zimbabwean government has begun evicting 12 000 poor black families from ”illegally” settled white-owned farms and other land, including property owned by a Cabinet minister and the church, reports Chris McGreal.
The state-owned Herald newspaper said the families must vacate the small proportion of white-owned farms in Masvingo province not designated for seizure under Mugabe’s land reforms.
Squatters must also leave designated wildlife conservation areas, church properties and black-owned farms, including one owned by the Speaker of the Zimbabwean Parliament, Emmerson Mnangagwa, a close ally of Mugabe.
Evictions in other provinces are expected in coming weeks.
An agriculture ministry official told Reuters: ”That has always been the policy, that the government is not going to allow illegal resettlement. What is going on now is simply that the land committees have been asked to move against those who have settled themselves illegally.”
About 95% of white-owned farmland has been designated for redistribution. Last week Mugabe tightened laws governing the transfer by giving his administration immediate control of those farms targeted for seizure. Any farmer attempting to hinder the redistribution faces up to two years in prison under the revised law.
Mugabe says he wants to complete the land redistribution programme by August. His critics say it has been a major contributor to a widespread severe food shortage.
There was a further blow to the agricultural economy on Tuesday when angry black tobacco farmers halted the first day of the annual auction of Zimbabwe’s biggest hard currency earner because of objections to exchange rate controls in tobacco sales.