Tsvangirai willing to discuss amnesty for Mugabe and top officials
By Tererai Karimakwenda
May 04, 2007

The president of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has said he could consider allowing Robert Mugabe to leave without being prosecuted for human rights abuses. The offer appeared in an opinion piece written by Tsvangirai which was published on Friday in The Washington Times newspaper. Tsvangirai said negotiations for this amnesty would have "no preconditions except that discussion must be aimed at bringing true freedom to the country." He said change would come whether Mugabe agrees to it or not, and warned the longer Mugabe and his allies stalled, the greater will be the wrath of the Zimbabwean people.

Geoff Hill, a writer and South Africa correspondent for The Washington Times, said the paper’s website in Washington was inundated with comments from Zimbabweans across the world who are totally against the idea of offering amnesty to Mugabe and his cronies. One woman went as far as writing that she would not rest until Mugabe was hanging from a Jacaranda tree in Harare. Hill said an elderly man from Matabeleland, who saw a relative disembowelled with a bayonet, had also commented on the site. Hill said: “..he has to live with that image the rest of his life. Would that man want Mugabe to escape free from prosecution?”

Hill said Tsvangirai’s offer did not tarnish his image even if many people are against amnesty. He said the MDC leader came across as a statesman and he has opened up debate, which is always a positive thing.

In his opinion piece in the Washington Post Tsvangirai did not forget the victims of Mugabe’s brutality. He wrote of Matabeleland where thousands were slaughtered, the murder and torture of opposition supporters and officials, and of the more than one million who were displaced during the demolitions of Operation Murambatsvina. Calling the situation a “Catch 22” Tsvangirai wrote: “If we say we'll bring these people to justice, they will cling ever-more firmly to power. Yet, if we offer them unconditional pardon, we sell out the hopes of their victims, millions of people who have a right to justice.”

Tsvangirai pointed to the demise of other African leaders, including the former leadership of Rwanda and Sierra Leone who are in prison, Idi Amin who died in exile, and Liberia’s Charles Taylor who is being prosecuted at the Hague for crimes against humanity. Asked whether he thought Mugabe would accept an offer of amnesty, Hill said if he was Mugabe he would not. He explained how Liberia’s Charles Taylor was given amnesty and escorted out by Nigeria’s President Obasanjo and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki. But he wound up being prosecuted anyway. Hill believes this had a big impact on Robert Mugabe.

We were unable to reach Morgan Tsvangirai for comment as the MDC leader has been consoling the family of the party’s national chairman and former unionist Isaac Matongo, who died in his sleep earlier this week.