Fellow Zimbabweans, I wish to recognise the difficulties before you in the last few days of 2006 and into the New Year. I note that 2007 began on an even harsher scale as we face rising prices of basic commodities, escalating transport costs and huge bills for school fees. My heart goes to those families still in grief over the loss of loved ones because of the collapse of our health delivery system and the shortage of food and live-saving HIV drugs.

Special mention must go to our embattled business community, harassed and arrested almost daily for trying to save their beleaguered investments and entrepreneurial operations. The year ahead of us presents even greater challenges to pensioners, small scale miners and cross-border traders as they grapple with the rising cost of living in a hyper-inflationary environment.

Our transition to a New Zimbabwe has been long and hard. We have come a long way. We are encouraged by your determination and unwavering stance against this dictatorship. Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF are on the verge of collapse. Recent developments in that party show a growing disenchantment with the ruling elite. Within Zanu PF, a significant body of opinion today is in favour of a solution to the national crisis. I thank you for weakening the nerve centre of the dictatorship through your refusal to legitimize the plunder of our national resources and rapacious acts of misrule. Things have begun to fall apart.

We are ready to co-operate and work with committed patriots who see sense in what we seek to achieve. We need to realign our positions and embrace those willing to join hands with us and Save Zimbabwe from further damage. Mugabe and Zanu PF must be stopped from continuously abusing well-meaning Zimbabweans, regardless of their political persuasion, whose patriotic desire is to chart an all inclusive way forward.

The shameful attack on the home and family of constitutional expert and activist, Dr Lovemore Madhuku is a symptom of the general panic within the establishment over a definite shift towards a national consensus on Zimbabwe’s future. Robert Mugabe and some elements in Zanu PF are terrified about tomorrow. They are trying to find an escape route out of a house already on fire. They shall target progressive groups and individuals to divert attention and to frustrate and intimidate them away from making a contribution to the realization of a New Zimbabwe and a new society. The regime shall employ desperate tactics to silence those from within its ranks who are against Mugabe’s extension of his rule to 2010. The regime shall confront all of us in the forlorn hope of imposing its will onto the people.

At our second Congress in March 2006, we charted a roadmap out of the national crisis. We agreed on a path to re-assert our political future and Save Zimbabwe. We set out to confront what is before us and I made a public call reflecting the same.

Despite the initial hitches and process impediments, our plan to be heard is clear to all. Today, I repeat that call and advise the nation to maintain open options and to keep its ear on the ground. The year 2007 has abundant opportunities. We must exploit them to help ourselves. We have solutions to the national crisis. With the fast-shifting opinion in Zanu PF and the resolute feeling in civil society, let us build a national consensus and work together to complete the transition.

Morgan Tsvangirai

President.