Mugabe deal splits opposition
Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Sunday night backed the deal, under which a power-sharing government would take over when Mugabe resigned.
But yesterday a senior MDC official said all talks with the ruling Zanu-PF party were off, and that it had no part in the reported plans.
“No further such negotiations can ever take place,” without the MDC leadership’s approval, Information Secretary Paul Nyathi said. The deal was said to have been offered in Mugabe’s absence by two of Zanu’s most powerful figures: Parliament speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa and General Vitalis Zvinavashe, the armed forces chief of staff.
Mugabe was returning home yesterday after a two-week holiday in Southeast Asia. He has not commented on the proposal.
Government officials said the offer was a bid to help Zimbabwe win back international legitimacy and renewed aid and investment during a period of transitional rule. Any power-sharing government would be confronted with an economic meltdown that has sent inflation soaring, caused a massive fuel shortage and left at least half the population on the brink of starvation.
Over the past three years, Mugabe’s government has seized most of the nation’s thousands of white-owned commercial farms. Officials call it a justified struggle by landless blacks to make amends for the colonial era that left 4,000 whites with one-third of the farm land.
Mugabe, who led the nation to independence in 1980, won a new six-year term in elections last March that independent observers said were deeply flawed.
The MDC, along with Britain, the EU and the US, have refused to recognise the results, saying the vote was rigged and had been marred by violence and intimidation. The farm disruptions and poor rains have led to the food crisis and coupled with political chaos and the government’s increasing isolation, have led to acute shortages of hard currency and essential imports.
Tsvangirai said he had not received “categoric assurances” from the full Zanu leadership that Mugabe would go.
“I can only go as far as to say as far as Mnangagwa and Zvinavashe were concerned, it’s part of the deal,” he said. “It is obvious Mugabe has become a liability to his party and the nation as a whole.”
However, the MDC would not insist Mugabe go into exile, he said.
