A South African mediation team was in Zimbabwe on Saturday as part of efforts to resolve the country’s political crisis amid mounting violence ahead of next week’s presidential run-off election.
The visit comes with South African President Thabo Mbeki reportedly seeking to have the June 27 run-off cancelled in favour of talks on forming a national unity government.
”They are part of the facilitation team, so they have gone there in the context of the facilitation process,” said Mbeki spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga, referring to Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi and adviser Mojanku Gumbi.
Facilitation is an official term for the 14-nation Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) mediation efforts for Zimbabwe’s political crisis.
Ratshitanga refused to comment on reports of Mbeki seeking to shelve the election as well as any further details of the mediation.
The South African team arrived late on Friday, said Ratshitanga, who was unsure how long it would remain in the country.
SADC has appointed Mbeki mediator for Zimbabwe, and he travelled there earlier this week, holding separate talks with President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
South African media have reported that he sought to arrange a first-ever meeting between the two men, where they would discuss the possibility of shelving the run-off in favour of a national unity government.
”He has warned that the run-off might exacerbate the situation,” the Star newspaper quoted an unnamed official as saying.
According to the paper, Tsvangirai told Mbeki he was prepared to meet the Zimbabwean president, but Mugabe was resistant to talks with his run-off opponent.
Violence has mounted ahead of Zimbabwe’s election, with the opposition claiming about 70 of its supporters have been killed in a campaign of intimidation since the first round of the vote on March 29.
Zimbabwe’s largest trade-union federation, which has routinely criticised Mugabe’s regime, warned on Saturday it ”will not accept an outcome from a flawed election”.
”Dozens of people have been murdered in politically motivated violence,” the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions said in a statement. ”Thousands of people have been threatened with death, beaten, tortured and harassed for expressing support for the opposition.”
Mugabe has threatened to arrest opposition leaders over the violence, though the United Nations has said his supporters were to blame for the bulk of it.
The 84-year-old leader has remained defiant in the face of criticism over conditions before the vote, dismissing opposition claims of violence in state media on Saturday as a ploy aimed at casting the election as unfair.
”They have been saying their supporters are being beaten up by our soldiers,” the Herald newspaper quoted Mugabe as telling an election rally in the second city of Bulawayo on Friday. ”They say this so that they can later say the elections were not free and fair. Which is a damn lie!”
The opposition was, however, handed a courtroom victory on Saturday, when a judge overturned a police ban on its main election rally to be held in the capital.
Police had not given a reason for barring the Sunday rally, said Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) opposition spokesperson Nelson Chamisa.
In what the opposition describes as harassment, Tsvangirai has been detained five times while seeking to campaign, while party number two Tendai Biti has been charged with subversion and faces the death penalty.
A court has ordered Biti held in jail until at least July 7 — well beyond the run-off date.
The opposition has showed signs of division on whether to press ahead with the campaign amid the violence, and Chamisa has said a meeting is set for Sunday to discuss the way forward.
Other MDC officials have dismissed talk of pulling out of the race — a move that would likely hand victory to Mugabe.
The UN Security Council was also to resume talks on Monday on the political violence and would meet on the outcome of UN troubleshooter Haile Menkerios’s recent mediation mission to Harare, diplomats said.
Menkerios, UN assistant secretary general for political affairs, met Mbeki in Pretoria on Friday following his visit to Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in the first round of the vote, but with an official vote total just short of an outright majority. — Sapa-AFP