Economy crisis piles pressure on Mugabe: Tsvangirai

Runaway inflation and the Zimbabwe dollar’s worst crash in memory will increase pressure on President Robert Mugabe to allow free and fair elections, the main opposition leader said.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, said Mugabe needed to consider elections as a way out of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis.

“He’s got an economy that’s down on its knees, he knows he cannot sustain it,” Tsvangirai said. “He knows he has an army that is jittery. He knows all his popular pillars of support are up against him.”

Tsvangirai spoke yesterday after making his first public appearance outside Zimbabwe with rival Movement for Democratic Change faction leader Arthur Mutambara at a news conference in London.

Zimbabwe’s opposition leaders are on a European tour aimed at building international support and showing that the opposition is united after months of infighting.

They were in Britain yesterday, a day after travelling to Germany and Belgium.

They will meet officials in Paris today.

Black market exchange rates – fuelled by the central bank buying at the illegal rates to pay the mounting debts of crumbling state fuel and power utilities - rose to upward of 300,000 Zimbabwe dollars to one US dollar (50p) in large offshore deals, traders in Harare said.

The official exchange rate is 15,000-1. Zimbabwe has the world’s highest rate of inflation, estimated officially at around 4,500%, but independent finance houses put it closer to 9,000%.

In separate interviews, Tsvangirai and Mutambara both said the opposition needed to mobilise behind one candidate in presidential elections scheduled for March, to ensure every opposition vote counted against Mugabe.

“Zimbabwe is burning, we can’t bicker among ourselves,” Mutambara said.

“We have been branded as divided and confused and directionless, and we are saying to the international community that we are capable despite our differences to work together,” he said.

However, Tsvangirai said a leadership contest was “unthinkable” and that he believed he should be the opposition candidate.

“Of course no one will stop anyone from contesting,” he said.

Tsvangirai said he still has scars after being brutally assaulted while in custody after police broke up a prayer meeting on March 11, but that he has healed and feels strong.

Tsvangirai said opposition leaders discussed election reforms with two Zimbabwe government ministers they met earlier this week in Pretoria, South Africa, as part of the mediation efforts.

Southern African states named South African President Thabo Mbeki as mediator earlier this year at the height of an international furore over the Zimbabwe government’s clampdown on opposition leaders. Mbeki advocates quiet diplomacy rather than public criticism.

“There was a time when quiet diplomacy meant quiet approval, but I think they’ve moved away from quiet approval,” Tsvangirai said.

“They’ve seen the deterioration of the conditions, and they are seeing the impact of the humanitarian consequences of that quiet approval,” he said.