Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe is secretly negotiating immunity from prosecution for crimes committed during his 23-year rule.
According to sources close to both his Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), he has been forced to manoeuvre for a peaceful exit from power by the country’s deteriorating economic and humanitarian conditions and intensifying international pressure.
Mugabe (79) cannot come up with solutions to the hunger and poverty gripping Zimbabwe, and his regime’s network of repression is stretched to breaking point — as even his militia cannot get adequate food for their families.
Mugabe is looking for an exit plan that will allow him to step down with dignity and keep him from standing trial for a variety of charges, including the Matabeleland massacres of the mid-1980s and the more recent torture and killings of MDC supporters, says the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper.
Mugabe is now talking to church leaders and other intermediaries about constitutional reform that would grant him immunity and allow a transition to free and fair elections.
If talks make progress in the coming months, Mugabe would retire as chairman of Zanu-PF at the party’s annual congress in December. Zanu-PF and the MDC would then negotiate a new constitution, which would be ratified by parliament and pave the way for parliamentary and presidential elections by June.
The summer deadline for elections emerged after US President George W. Bush met South African President Thabo Mbeki in Pretoria last month. Bush put Mbeki in charge of finding a resolution to the Zimbabwean crisis, and it is understood that he gave the South African leader a year to achieve positive results.
Zimbabwean civic leaders believe Mugabe’s efforts to extricate himself from responsibility are so advanced that they issued an call for all perpetrators of human rights abuses to be held accountable.
The leaders of Zimbabwean women’s groups, churches, teachers’ unions, lawyers’ and doctors’ organ isations and other professional bodies demanded that the Mugabe government put ‘an immediate end to political violence and intimidation’ when they met in South Africa last month.
The UN was urged to send a special rapporteur to Zimbabwe to assess the human rights environment. The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights was asked to release the report on its mission to Zimbabwe last year.
Brian Kagoro, co-ordinator of the Crisis in Zimbabwe coalition, said the pressure for change came externally ‘from South Africa and Nigeria because they must prove there is concrete progress to keep Zimbabwe from being expelled from the Commonwealth when it holds its heads of government meeting in December. But the most potent pressure is the growing poverty, hunger and starvation on the ground in Zimbabwe.’
The pressure on Mugabe from continuing hunger was highlighted by new estimates from the UN World Food Programme that 3,3-million Zimbabweans are currently in urgent need of food aid. WFP expects the number to increase to 5,5-million by January. ‘People are so desperate for food that, at some distribution sites, beneficiaries have been seen opening and eating uncooked rations on the spot,’ said WFP country director Kevin Farrell. ‘Some reportedly lack the strength to even carry their food home.’
Farrell welcomed a â,¬25-million donation from the European Commission, which he said would enable WFP to continue the urgent distribution of food. – Guardian Unlimited Â