Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change will take its claim of victory in last month’s election over President Robert Mugabe to the United Nations Security Council this week, the party said on Sunday.
MDC secretary general Tendai Biti will lead a delegation to New York, where he will tell a Security Council session on Zimbabwe’s post-election stand-off that the party is not prepared to partake in a presidential run-off, an MDC statement said.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai insists that he won the March 29 election outright, a claim that Zanu-PF rejects, saying neither he nor Mugabe won a majority and that a run-off is required.
Official results have not yet been released in the presidential election, but the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said it would begin verifying and collating results from a partial recount of the votes on Monday, sparking fresh hopes that the outcome might shortly be known.
Bolstered by confirmation of its historic victory over Mugabe’s party in the parliamentary elections, the MDC said Sunday it would tell the UN Security Council that it would not participate in a presidential run-off, ”whatever the circumstances and conditions”.
The party has touted an ”inclusive” transitional government led by Tsvangirai.
A partial recount of some seats in the parliamentary election showed the MDC retaining its majority over Zanu-PF, which was relegated to a minority party for the first time since coming to power at independence in 1980.
The MDC won 109 seats in the 210-seat House of Assembly in the first count of votes, against 97 for Zanu-PF.
Tsvangirai’s party had feared Zanu-PF might try to claw back Parliament by rigging the recount, but with 18 of 23 seats recounted, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) said there had been ”no major changes”.
As the recount dragged on, the US appealed to Zimbabwe’s neighbours to put pressure on the government to halt violence against civilians.
Jendayi Frazer, United States assistant secretary of state for Africa, held talks on Sunday with Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa.
”I think the region needs to be speaking very loudly and clearly to President Mugabe and his government to say that the violence must come to an end immediately,” Frazer said afterward.
It was ”unacceptable” that people were being punished for voting for change, said Frazer, who has declared Tsvangirai the ”clear winner” of the election.
MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa claimed that more than 15 party members have been killed by mostly Zanu-PF youth militia and soldiers in attacks against people in rural areas suspected of ”voting wrongly”. He also claimed that more than 3 000 houses had been burnt down and 5 000 families displaced.
The MDC has blasted South Africa’s silence on the violence — South African President Thabo Mbeki said recently there was ”no crisis” in Zimbabwe — and called on the UN to send an envoy to work with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on resolving the impasse.
Pressure is also growing within South Africa for Mbeki, the SADC mediator in Zimbabwe, to take a harder line with 84-year-old Mugabe, who has shown no signs of willingness to retire despite his party’s admission he did not win the presidency.
Speaking on Sunday on South Africa’s Freedom Day, well-known activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela told South African radio: ”We wish that they would stop the violence in Zimbabwe. If the Zimbabweans are not free, we [South Africans] are not free.”
This week’s UN Security Council session on Zimbabwe comes amid calls by Britain and activists for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, after China attempted to supply arms to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.
The ship An Yue Jiang, which had been refused harbour in several African ports, docked in the Angolan port of Luanda, where the government has denied it permission to unload the arms for transport to landlocked Zimbabwe, South African television reported.
The Security Council meeting also follows a forceful police raid on Friday on MDC headquarters, in which more that 200 people — mostly people displaced by the violence in rural areas — were arrested.
By Sunday the detainees had not yet been brought to court to be formally charged. ‒ Sapa-DPA