Zimbabwe’s feuding parties will meet over the weekend to thrash out a compromise, with the first deadline imposed by the region to resolve the remaining issues likely to be missed.
President Jacob Zuma is expected in Zimbabwe next week to monitor progress, according to a timetable set by regional leaders earlier this month. After the start of the latest round of negotiations was delayed, the parties are rushing to find common ground ahead of Zuma’s visit.
The Southern African Development Community’s November 6 troika summit gave Zimbabwe 30 days to resolve the crisis but, as a sign of its impatience, told the parties to show some progress within 15 days. Yet, no substantive talks had been held by this week.
”They will work from Friday right into the weekend to deal with the issues as mandated by the SADC troika summit,” said Gorden Moyo, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s minister of state. A report on the progress made would be released at the weekend, he said.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) wants Robert Mugabe to reverse key government appointments he made without consulting his coalition partners, key among them is the appointment of allies Gideon Gono as central bank governor and Johannes Tomana as attorney general. The MDC also wants reforms to media and security laws speeded up and the unconditional swearing-in to government of Roy Bennett, whose terrorism trial has rocked the coalition.
The MDC believes much hinges on the outcome of the trial, which the party sees as evidence of Mugabe’s continuing persecution of opponents. Mugabe is placing much importance on nailing Bennett, sending in the attorney general to lead the state’s case in court.
But the state’s case was crumbling spectacularly in the high court this week, so badly that Tomana faced censure from his own superiors in government.
A police witness admitted to a judge that not all the weapons displayed in court as evidence against Bennett had been retrieved from Peter Hitschmann, an arms dealer alleged to be Bennett’s accomplice. The state also failed to produce proof that Bennett had deposited $5 000 into a Mozambican bank account for Hitschmann to buy arms.
The state’s setbacks have left Tomana at the mercy of both his critics and the government. In a memo seen by the Mail & Guardian Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa angrily accuses Tomana of incompetence.
The country’s lawyers’ association also approached Chinamasa to demand Tomana’s resignation over his bias and the ”continued harassment and attacks on its members”. In a petition to protest against a series of arrests and harassment of lawyers representing government opponents, the Law Society of Zimbabwe said: ”The harassment has been a direct attack [on] and interference with the independence of the legal profession from the police, attorney general and other state agents. This has left the integrity and safety of the legal practitioners at stake.”
Meanwhile, the German embassy in Zimbabwe reported that Wolfgang Thamm, a Jesuit priest and German citizen, had been assaulted by ”four junior members of the Zimbabwean Army” after he was stopped outside an army barracks north of Harare last Sunday.
”One soldier took Father Thamm’s glasses and slammed him in the face before forcing him out of the car. The priest was then ordered by the soldiers to kneel in a large puddle of water. When he hesitated to follow the order, he was pushed into the dirty pool and brutally kicked several times by the soldiers.” Germany said this was ”totally unacceptable misconduct” and ”a disgrace to the Zimbabwean armed forces”.