Zimbabwe’s main alliance of civic organisations expressed cautious optimism after a meeting between President Robert Mugabe and leaders of the country’s major churches on Friday.
Mugabe held two hours of talks at his official residence with senior representatives of the Zimbabwe Christian Council. The council represents the country’s mainstream protestant and catholic churches as well as the evangelical Christian churches.
Bishop Sebastian Bakare, of Mutare in eastern Zimbabwe, said after the meeting he and bishops Patrick Mutume and Trevor Manhanga had called on Mugabe to register their concern over what was happening in the country and to try to facilitate dialogue between Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
”Our strong desire is to bring them together in the interests of Zimbabwe,” the independent Daily News quoted Bakare as saying. Mugabe had been ”fairly responsive” to their approach. ”We would like to carry on with our discussion with the two parties so they can come up with a home-grown solution, without having to get some outsiders to tell us what to do.”
Zimbabwean churches have been involved in exploratory shuttles for the last three months to try and bring the country’s two main political antagonists to negotiate an end to the political and economic crises in the country.
The impetus for dialogue received a sharp boost on July 9 when United States president George Bush and South African president Thabo Mbeki discussed the issue, and agreed on the need for urgent action.
Because of the political turmoil of the last couple of years,
Zimbabwe’s once robust economy is in collapse. Inflation is forecast to hit 1 000% at the end of 2003, while the gross domestic product has slumped 30% in just three years and a famine looms.
Brian Kagoro, senior coordinator in the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, said the organisation supported the churches’ initiative.
”It’s encouraging that they have met, but it’s the extent to which they are able to agree on a commitment to unconditional dialogue that is important.”
The country’s established churches have turned against Mugabe in recent months, with the ZCC last week apologising for its inaction during years of ”state-driven lawlessness and impoverishment”.
There were Nigerian and South African-brokered dialogue initiatives immediately after Mugabe’s victory in flawed presidential elections in March 2002, but these collapsed after three weeks when Mugabe broke off formal talks because of the MDC’s challenge to the election result.
The MDC, backed by independent international election observers, said Mugabe had won by means of fraud, intimidation, repressive laws that stopped Tsvangirai from campaigning, and the mass disenfranchisement of MDC supporters.
Mugabe has refused to talk to the MDC until it dropped its court challenge to the election results.
Remarks in the state press on Saturday indicated Mugabe was sticking to this condition. The Herald, the ruling party’s main mouthpiece, quoted unnamed sources as saying that Mugabe told the bishops he was ”concerned about the impediments (to talks) cause by the MDC”. This included the MDC’s refusal to recognise his re-election.
However, Mugabe was also quoted as welcoming the olive branch the MDC put out to the government this week when it decided to drop a planned walkout of Parliament during Mugabe’s annual address at the opening of the legislature.
Mugabe told the church leaders he hoped this was the beginning of new thinking in the MDC ranks and that he looked forward to brighter things to come. ‒ Sapa