Chinamasa says Zanu-PF to forge ahead
January 27, 2009
PRETORIA, (AP) – A top Zanu-PF official said on Tuesday the party was prepared to form a government on its own if the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will not join it.
Patrick Chinamasa, spokesperson for Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, said the government should be sworn in on February 13, as proposed by regional leaders earlier in the day.
He said his party would give the opposition a few more days to decide whether to join in a unity government.
Southern African leaders declared on Tuesday that Zimbabwe’s rival parties had agreed to form a unity government, but the opposition said this was not the case.
In a communique, nine SADC leaders and cabinet ministers from four other countries said a Zimbabwean prime minister – the post that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai is earmarked for – would be sworn in on February 11 after Parliament passes a constitutional amendment creating the post. Ministers are scheduled to be sworn in on February 13, the statement from the regional bloc said.
But Nqobizitha Mlilo, a spokesperson for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told the Associated Press that “the MDC has not agreed to go into the government of national unity.”
He said his party’s leaders would meet on Friday to decide their next step.
South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), told reporters that the opposition had agreed to the coalition government.
“They will ensure that [the Constitutional amendment] is executed and they will present themselves” to form a government, he said.
But an MDC statement released soon after said the summit’s conclusions “fall far short of our expectations”.
In Harare, political scientist Eldred Masunungure of the University of Zimbabwe agreed with the opposition that “this resolution doesn’t resolve anything”.
He called it “a victory for Mugabe and Zanu-PF, but there isn’t much for the people of Zimbabwe to enjoy.”
An opposition statement noted the summit had failed to address concerns including the equitable sharing of Cabinet posts and the abduction and alleged torture of opposition members by government security agents and police.
The MDC has consistently resisted pressure to join a coalition government, in which it is agreed that Mugabe would remain president, until these disputes are resolved.
The summit, however, agreed to Mugabe’s demand that the MDC first enter into government, and then resolve outstanding issues.
The leaders also sided with Mugabe in insisting that the rival parties should share the cabinet portfolio of home affairs – important because it oversees the police who have been accused of kidnapping and brutalising opposition supporters.
Phandu Skelemani, the Foreign Minister of Botswana, which has been a lone voice in the region in criticising Mugabe, said the suggestion of sharing a ministry was “ridiculous”.
Speaking in an interview with SW Radio Africa while the summit was taking place, Skelemani said the Southern African bloc “is divided because we simply don’t put the people first but rather an individual”.
He said the leaders “feel some kind of obligation toward Mugabe”, though, increasingly, some were speaking out in private.
Mugabe said earlier on Tuesday he hoped that the power-sharing agreement with the MDC would lead to a “new chapter”.
“We hope that this will open up a new chapter in our political relations in the country and in structures of government,” Mugabe told the state-run television at Harare airport on arriving from the summit held in South Africa.
“We agreed that an inclusive government should be formed. Dates have been stipulated for the various acts … starting with swearing-in of the top people, the prime minister, deputy prime ministers and ministers,” Mugabe said.
“We will look at the concerns that the MDC raised regarding governors and other appointments.”
Mugabe also said he hoped a parliamentary amendment would “lead to the legalization of the agreement”.
Both Mugabe and Tsvangirai are under pressure. Some of Tsvangirai’s allies say he never should have agreed to serve as prime minister under Mugabe, while Mugabe is constrained by military and civilian aides who don’t want to give up power and access to corrupt gains.
Leaders at this week’s summit appeared to ignore pressure from all fronts, including Roman Catholic bishops of Southern Africa who called on them to stop supporting Mugabe or accept complicity in a “passive genocide” of Zimbabweans dying of hunger and disease.
The collapse of the water system in Zimbabwe, exacerbated by the crumbling health-care system, has been blamed for the severity of a cholera outbreak that has killed about 3 000 people.
The United Nations on Tuesday put the death toll at 2 971, with more than 56 000 people infected.
The global body said more than one person in every 20 who contract cholera in Zimbabwe is dying. The usual mortality rate for large-scale outbreaks is one in 100.
In the United States, State Department spokesperson Robert Wood said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was reviewing what more the Obama administration can do to help.
“We’re just very concerned about the behaviour of Mugabe,” he said. “It appears to us that the regime has no interest in its own people …”
The European Union on Monday added 62 individuals and companies to a blacklist, freezing assets and barring travel to those who funnel money to prop up Mugabe and his clique.
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I concur with you chairman Mao. The old man definitely made concessions but his problem is implementation. The best for him was to tell the AG to drop all the charges on the political prisoners immediately and certainly before Friday’s meeting, tell all his govenors that they jobs are over, fire Gono, Fire that Tomana fool, apologise to Zimbabweans for brutalising them for the past 29 years. This issue of talking about unilateral governments is both foolish and dangerous.
Has the time come for the MDC to state that it would not be in the long-term interests of Zimbabwe to participate in this joint government. Perhaps they need to state that the country is in need of a government, but there is little point in forming a government headed by Mugabe. It appears as if large changes might be underway in the Zimbabwean political landscape.
Zanu-pf will now go about bragging that MDC was responsible for the collapse of the economy and it had to bring MDC into the government to put right what it destroyed! This GNU will not work.
Chinamasa just like other ZANU PF gurus is just a lost soul. He is a political failure and will remain a failure. He failed on the Tsholotsho fiasco, on the June elections etc. We all know that Chinamasa is just a leaker of Bob’s dirty ass. He doesn’t have anybody’s mandate except that of Bob and the decaying ZANU PF part. Chinamasa, “you are a shame to your family, province, zimbabwe and above all to yourself”. Pasi naChinamasa.