Zimbabwe crisis on SADC summit agenda

| Thursday November 18, 2010 00:00

A highly placed source in Harare says the 15 regional leaders will be in Botswana from Thursday until Saturday to attend the official commissioning of the new SADC headquarters in Gaborone. The leaders will use this opportunity to attend the Extraordinary Summit, which has been called to discuss the political situation in the region, including Zimbabwe.

'On the sidelines of the commissioning of the new SADC headquarters, the SADC Troika will on Friday hold a meeting to discuss Zimbabwe,' the source said. It is believed Zambian President, Rupiah Banda, who chairs the Troika Organ, will brief other leaders on the Zimbabwe crisis when he presents his first report to the Summit on Saturday.

Last month, Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, met with Banda in Lusaka where the two leaders examined the latest crisis in Harare over the unilateral senior appointments by Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai is also seeking guarantees from SADC that they will establish a roadmap to allow free and fair national elections in the country set for 2011.

Both Mugabe and Tsvangirai have said elections to choose a new government to replace their troubled coalition must take place next year, once an exercise to write a new constitution is completed. In the past month, the MDC-T has been on a diplomatic offensive, writing letters and visiting several influential leaders in the region.

It is believed that some SADC leaders are pushing for the immediate deployment of a SADC team to oversee the reform and electoral process.  But some observers remain concerned that other leaders in SADC are firmly on Mugabe's side and are not impartial enough to help run free elections in Zimbabwe.

South African President, Jacob Zuma's, facilitation team is currently in Zimbabwe, apparently to gather information that Zuma can use to brief leaders in Botswana.

Zuma has also come in with a strong message calling for the immediate implementation of all outstanding agreed GPA reforms, before an election can be held. His three member team met Mugabe and Tsvangirai separately on Monday and was due to meet with Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara on Tuesday.

'What the team is doing here is gathering information on the recent complaints raised by the MDC-T to the mediator,' sources say.

The latest political crisis was triggered by Mugabe's unilateral appointments of governors, judges and ambassadors, after which Tsvangirai wrote to Zuma complaining about Mugabe not consulting him on the appointments and his refusal to implement outstanding issues in the GPA. The acrimony between the two leaders is now so bad that Tsvangirai this weekend finally lost his patience and labelled Mugabe 'a crook'.