By Lance Guma
28 July 2010
South African President Jacob Zuma dispatched one of his top envoys to Zimbabwe, in yet another attempt to try to kick start power sharing talks that are gridlocked over various violations of the GPA by ZANU PF.
Former Transport Minister Mac Maharaj arrived on Tuesday and was expected to meet separately with the three party principals, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara and Robert Mugabe. Officials as usual were very coy about releasing any information to the media.
Suggestions that Maharaj would also meet inter-party negotiators were dismissed as wide of the mark by some senior MDC officials. One official also told us Maharaj, as a facilitator in the talks, had no mandate to meet all three principals at once and that the only person who could do this was the chief facilitator Jacob Zuma. The mission to Harare by Maharaj is being viewed as laying the ground-work for a possible trip by Zuma in the coming weeks or even days.
South African officials say they want to step up efforts at bridging the divide between ZANU PF and its partners in the coalition government, before a Southern African Development Community summit in Namibia in August. But commentators are unanimous that the South African government, including Zuma, is too strongly aligned to Mugabe to demand that he honour the power sharing deal he signed in September 2008.
Only last week Mugabe gazetted a unilateral reshuffle and appointment of ambassadors to South Africa, Angola, Geneva, Italy, Sweden and the United Nations. In May this year the ZANU PF leader also appointed a new Supreme Court judge and four High Court judges, without the knowledge of his MDC partners in government. All this, the MDC says, shows that he is not sincere about sharing power, despite the fact he lost elections in March 2008.
Since the formation of the coalition government in February 2009 the MDC have cried foul over a long list of violations of the deal by ZANU PF. Every month Mugabe’s party commits more violations. This week it was reported Tsvangirai had had enough of Mugabe’s provocation and wanted Zuma to intervene and rein him in. ZANU PF jingles on state radio and television denigrating his party and praising Mugabe seem to have tested his tolerance.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told Newsreel, “Over and above these issues we even have fresh commissions and omissions that undermine the spirit of inclusivity. It’s vital for Zimbabwe and our guarantors that these matters are put to rest. It’s almost two years and we are still talking of things that we agreed on.”
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