SADC summit needed to restore Zimbabwe government, ministers say

Oct 30, 2009, 19:28 GMT

Harare - Three southern African government ministers recommended Friday the convening of an extraordinary summit of Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders to try to rescue Zimbabwe's troubled power-sharing government.

The foreign ministers of Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia were delivering their assessment after meeting with President Robert Mugabe and his rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, about the stalemate in their eight-month-old union.

Mozambican Foreign Minister Oldemiro Baloi said the trio would recommend to SADC to 'convene a summit as soon as possible.'

The summit would 'be soon, almost immediately,' he said.

Mugabe and Tsvangirai met separately Friday with the ministers, who spent the previous day meeting with party negotiators, human rights activists and Arthur Mutambara, leader of an offshoot of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

SADC was prompted to intervene when the MDC announced two weeks ago that its ministers would boycott cabinet meetings until Mugabe's Zanu-PF stopped stalling on the implementation of key, agreed-upon reforms.

The main sticking points that emerged, according to Baloi, were Western sanctions against Mugabe and other Zanu-PF top brass; Mugabe's unilateral appointment of his cronies to the posts of reserve bank governor and attorney-general and the slow pace of media reforms.

Mugabe insists that European Union and United States travel bans and asset freezes levied on scores of individuals and companies linked to Zanu-PF are impeding Zimbabwe's economic turnaround. The EU and US are refusing to lift the sanctions until seeing more human rights reforms.

Baloi downplayed the tensions between Zanu-PF and the MDC.

'A year ago hardly could they talk to each other. They would see each other as enemies,' he said of the parties.

'We should praise them for what they have achieved so far,' he said.

On the reported resurgence in violence targeting Mugabe critics, Baloi said only that the issue had been mentioned during the talks.

A United Nations torture expert, Amnesty International and the MDC have all warned of signs of a return to the violence that characterized last year's presidential election run-off, when scores of MDC supporters were killed by Mugabe supporters.

On Friday, a group of armed men allegedly opened fire on farmworkers during an invasion of a white-owned farm in Chinhoyi district north of Harare.

A male worker, a woman and a child suffered severe gunshot wounds, doctors said. The invaders also allegedly burnt down half the workers' houses. Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers Union says Edwin Mashringwani, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank and Zanu-PF member, is behind the land grab.

This week, Manfred Nowak, UN rapporteur on torture, was barred from entering Zimbabwe on a fact-finding mission - despite being invited by Tsvangirai.