Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Sunday said his party would engage in mass action next year to bring about democratic change in the southern African country.
”We are determined to ensure democratic resistance and mass action. It’s the agenda for 2004 and we don’t have to hide it,” Tsvangirai told reporters at the end of a two-day conference of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.
The opposition leader was presenting his party’s resolutions to the press following the conference in the capital Harare.
Tsvangirai, who faces treason charges for organising mass action against the government in June this year, said the MDC remained resolute in wanting to bring about political change through non-violent means.
”This regime is cornered. It has no friends, it has no fuel, it has no foreign currency and it has no capacity to respond to the economic difficulties,” Tsvangirai said.
Zimbabwe is currently in the grip of its worst economic crisis, with inflation at 620%, 70% unemployment and critical shortages of hard cash needed to buy food, fuel and medicine.
Because of this, Tsvangirai said Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) had no choice but to ”come to the negotiating table”.
Talks between the four-year-old MDC and Mugabe’s Zanu-PF brokered by South Africa and Nigeria last year were scuppered when Tsvangirai stuck to his refusal to recognise Mugabe’s victory in 2002 presidential elections.
Tsvangirai said his party believed the government would ultimately be forced to engage in talks.
”The question is not whether they (Zanu-PF) will come to the negotiating table, the question is when,” he said.
South African leader Thabo Mbeki this week came to Harare in an apparent bid to kickstart the talks. – Sapa-AFP