Tanzanian president visits Mugabe as global condemnation continues

By Tererai Karimakwenda
15 March, 2007

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete is reported to be in Zimbabwe for a visit with Robert Mugabe, as strong condemnation of recent state sponsored assaults and torture continued to come from around the world. Despite this heavy criticism government continued to arrest and torture opposition officials and supporters while accusing the MDC of initiating the violence.

In Bulawayo on Wednesday, police rounded up the local MDC officials including Sam Sipepa Nkomo, who is also chairman of the Associated Newspapers Zimbabwe which published the banned Daily News newspaper. The offices of the MDC in Harare were also raided Wednesday, just a day after police descended on the offices of the umbrella labour union the ZCTU. They seized a box of fliers with information highlighting workers’ wages below the poverty datum line and inaccessible anti-retroviral drugs. The ZCTU said 2 of their staff members were assaulted.

A statement from State House in Harare said Tanzanian President Kikwete, whose country is part of the SADC troika of nations charged with helping to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis, is to hold talks with Mugabe during his one-day visit. Tanzania`s Director of Intelligence, Rashid Othman, is reported to have held closed-door meetings last Tuesday with top Zimbabwean security officials in an effort to revive dialogue between Zimbabwe and Britain.

Condemnation has come from all corners of the world including the United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International and the United States state department. And for the first time the African Union has spoken out against Mugabe’s brutality, albeit rather weakly. Ghanaian president and current A.U. Chairman John Kufuor, who was in London Wednesday, admitted that events in Zimbabwe were “embarrassing” and acknowledged that Mugabe had resisted efforts to help. This was in response to pressure by members of the UK based Free Zim Youth, who interrupted his address and shouted anti-Mugabe slogans.

South Africa based Zimbabwean activist Gabriel Shumba who was tortured by agents of the Mugabe regime in 2003 and whose case is before the African Union, said it is pretty obvious that African leaders have changed their stance on Mugabe. He said: “The old don’t wash your dirty linen in public method they were practicing has not helped Africans”. Shumba believes the torture and brutalisation of the opposition and civic leaders has jolted the world and the region into action.