akaphunde.....go back home to your toture camp/militia base.....that one right outside Gweru....your skills in lying and murder are being called for.

Unity Deal? Look at what happened to Joshua Nkomo of the ZAPU party in the 80s and you'll realize that with Mugabe, there is no "unity". Mugabe has play the unity card before and always won while his so called unity "partners" had to leave the country or die. Just look back at Mugabe's history and you'll see the answer to any unity scheme.

Magabe should be awarded a masters degree in murder,bullying and most recently intimidation[look at the AU summit in Egypt].Mugabe is a professional in intimidating people.First his nation,UK,SADC and then the AU.Mr Mandela has to be commended for his straight to the bone comments about Zimbabwe.Let's not forget former achirbishop Desmond Tutu as well.

How can the Business Day come out with such a sensational headline when the MDC do not know of any such deal. Surely they must be biased in support of Mbeki and what he is doing so as to continue with the "Second phase of the Revolution" and how can an SA minister inform Rice that a deal is eminent

It is one step in the right direction only if: 1.The deal does not take the whole population of the political parties like what happened in Kenya. 2.The interests of the Zimbabwean people are on the forefront/point of focus. 3.The constitution of Zimbabwe is amended as a matter of urgency. 4.Fresh elections are held within 12 months. 5.Furthermore,Uncle Bob abondons his dirty tricks of terrorising people to support him. 6.The mediator be as neutral as can be possible. if those can be observed,then a solution might be found.

I can’t believe that anyone would even consider Gono or Munangwagwa viable candidates for Prime minister or that people still pander to the whims of a clearly exposed tyrant like Mugabe. This transitional government or unity government thing is a slap in the face of the people of Zimbabwe who will be asked to put up with more of the same incompetence from the sae discredited individuals. What a joke! And you call it a breakthrough. This is nothing more than abject failure

Besides ranting insults at his Excellency, the President of Great Zimbabwe, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, do you have alternative postive solutions other than your desire to see wars in africa?? Clearly you are an ALP (air lift person) ... a person who loves to see wars and conflicts exploding in other lands. Not in Europe!!!You know that you would be air lifted to safety in the event of war in Zimbabwe or whereever. You are so irrational and patronising. ... a common denominator in missionaries, be they political, business, or religious. If Africans were frogs your type would keep them at the tadpole stage for ever. May l suggest, keep off the back of Africans for six weeks and see what happens. I bet you cannot!!!

'Power-sharing', under the Mugabe administration, would be nothing more than cutting a few people in on the spoils. The sad destruction of Zimbabwe by its original liberator would continue unabated.

To be a part of a so-called 'unity government' would be the WORST possible move MDC could make at this point. They should immediately and clearly state that they are NOT in 'talks', that they want NOTHING to do with a 'unity government' and that Mugabe must now work to clean up the pile of dung he has turned Zim into. They should also state that if SADC, AU, and UN are too corrupt and weak to deal with Mugabe, then the world will see them for what ther are---useless talking heads. To join a 'unity government' would be to join hands with murderers, and to kiss the devil. Why should we seek another Kenya in Southern Africa?? The only answer is truly free and fair elections.

OOOooh When and how are you going to achieve your goal of truly free elections??? All you do is rant insults at the people with power to mess up your life. You and l are not politicians. Lets politics to the politicians. The only way forward is to set a UNITY administration in Great Zim

Just great. The next thing we will read about is how they are offering juicy posts and lots of money to MDC leadership so that they will accept being neutered. Mugabe has done this many times over the years---brought a beaten-up enemy into the government---only to sideline him and use him for Mugabe's political ends. See Joshua Nkomo. Its Kenya all over again--a 'unity government' which solves NOTHING. And it is yet another glaring example of the bias and corruption of Mbeki, the ANC, RSA, SADC, AU and the UN. I say, stand strong MDC. Boycott this murdererous government. Hold out for a truely free election---which of course MDC would win by 75% or more.

Having gone through a history of struggle as a black South African from 1910 to 1994 (including the Union of South Africa and the Republic of South Africa)there are points for the record:

(a) The problem in Zimbabwe was not made by us. We are totally not responsible for the mess in Zimbabwe. We dont have great grandparents who took land there by killing of the native population. (b) We were struggle relatives to Joshua Nkomo's marxist-leninist ZAPU party. The Maoist Zanu was backed by China and in 1980 Ronald Reagan invited Mugabe to the white House and thanked him for being a bastion against Soviet expansion in Southern Africa. (c) We have a simple mediating role given to us by SADC. I have never heard of anybody mediating between two parties declaring upfront an outcome favoured by one of the conflicting parties. If you do that you are no longer involved in mediation. So writing about Mbeki having failed in Zimbabwe is a gross distortion of facts.

In South Africa we were involved in negotiation with whites who maintained a system of Apartheid since 1910. A morally wrong and evil system but their interests and points of view were taken inot account in the new South Africa. They killed Hani just days before the first democratic national elections but our leaders went on with the process.

Tsvangerai may be a clever man. He has managed to outsource his struggle and made it a South African issue. He has managed to paint Mbeki as a friend of Mugabe and upfront tasked Mbeki to get his desired outcome out of Mugabe. He is not involved in any negotiations. Nothing in our history and values make us responsible for Mugabe.

I have never heard Morgan delineate his struggle in terms of its geopolitical evolvement in Southern Africa. The way he sulks and accuses Mbeki he could be one of our own 9 provinces premiers or another opposition party in South Africa. We want virile, and well informed leadership in Zimbabwe, the MDC is weak, not resourceful and probably taking orders from one of the many CIA-front US NGO's who want to recolonise Southern Africa. That is why he holes up in the Dutch embassy so that the CIA and MI15 can reach him and tell him what to do without exposing him to international ridicule. This is the man who in one day told us his people were being killed in Zim but on the same day in Alexandra told them: "let's go home." I wish when I was in exile I had the pleasure of just going home whenever my whim told me so.

The MDC owes it to its people top provide credible and convincing leadership

So it's the CIA that is involved in Zimbabwe? Why would foreign intelligence agencies be involved in some hinterland backwater country like Zimbabwe?

As far as Zimbabwe's relations with the United States is concerned, I don't think the US is really concerned with it other than sympathizing with the view of Zimbabwe from Europe. Plus, unlike South Africa or even Zambia and the DRC, Zimbabwe's not particularly big in the metallurgical department (including petroleum).

Even geopolitically, Zimbabwe's not like Latin America (the "backyard" of the U.S.), which is why most of the economic interests in Zimbabwe derive from British and South African institutions (those being mostly interested in the agricultural sector), not from U.S. shores. I could surmise why the U.S. would be interested in Zambia, the DRC (former Zaire under Mobutu), South Africa and Angola through the exporting of military supplies and CIA operatives during the Cold War (Communists everywhere!), but not places like Zimbabwe, Kenya, Mozambique, etc., that have never fared as big as their neighbors in metallurgical terms.

The only thing that I could imagine drawing the United States' attention to Zimbabwe militarily is the advance of post-Mao China as a supplier of ammunition and PLA soldiers, but only because it has been much more pronounced in Zimbabwe than in most other African countries except for Sudan since Hu Jintao came to power. Plus, if that is the case, then I don't think the U.S. is doing that good a job of containing Chinese military and economic influence in that area so far, since clearly the most-cliental governments are growing increasingly dependent upon China's exports; in light of the USAFRICOM division that was created recently, they may use this new extension of the U.S. military to both shore up the Chinese influence and deflect the growing influence of Islamist fundamentalism in the northern two-thirds of the continent, but USAFRICOM was only started around last year and won't grow into anything big for the next decade, or at least until the U.S. develops some "possession" that it needs to protect on the continent. Only two countries have publicly stated that they want USAFRICOM on the continent: Ethiopia and Liberia.

So the U.S.' interest in Zimbabwe is pretty slim outside of the Chinese issue, in my opinion, and to reach for a U.S. involvement in the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe is to reach for vapor. This is primarily between Britain (the former colonizer that practically installed Mugabe and ZANU-PF as the ruler and now wants him out, and is despised by both "Rhodies" and "Zanoids" because it has "interfered" with the political affairs of that part of the continent rather often), Zimbabwe (a country that is throwing away any and all economic opportunities in order to entrench and enrich its military status quo in the name of native empowerment) and South Africa (a country that just had a wave of killings against Zimbabwean and other foreign nationals, who number into the millions in the already-greatly-economically-stratified demographic).

I think the MDC, in its policy, has a better argument than either the "Rhodies" or "Zanoids" because 1) it is officially liberal, social-democratic and progressive 2) it is tied to the trade unions rather than the military or a militant movement and 3) it doesn't have any obvious roots in any of the political organizations from before 1980 (most of which were either capitalist white supremacist, like the Rhodesian Front, or Marxist black supremacist, like the ZANU and ZAPU organizations, all of which were conservative and anti-liberal). I'd consider the MDC the first major post-independence political party in Zimbabwe's history, one that is fairly indigenous to Zimbabwe's history and not to Rhodesia's history (unlike the ZANU-PF and its antecedents, which were created out of reaction to the ethnoracial issues of Rhodesia).

Disclaimer: I am a U.S. citizen and native.

MAKOROKOTO. l love you. Seriously speaking your post is very educational. GIVE US SOME MORE!!!

Mugabe would have to swallow ALOT of pride to accept some form of unity party with Tsvangarai, after all that he has said about him being a puppet of the west, sellout etc etc, then to say that he will help govern the country surely back tracks on his believes that he so strongly campaigned by and murdered for.

Im going to wind you back to the GUKURAHUNDI of the mid 80s.What happened to our old JOSH and ZAPU?I suppose they all died down in the name of UNITY.ZAPU POLITIBURO oppenly saw that ZANU(ROBERT MUGABE) to be more precise was wipping the entire Matebele tribe so they opted for so called UNITY.Before the talks BOB MUGABE oppointed himself PRESIDENT and hid behind his smallest finger by appointing JOSH and sekuru MUZENDA vice presidents.That was the end of ZAPU replaced by the monster ZANUPF.The same thing is going to happen with MDC.In a laymans point of view politics is nothing short of individuals hauling at each other abusively at the expense of poor peasants so I feel enough is enough ZANUPF must go without negotiations.PLEASE George and Gordon you are the only Saviours for the Zimbabwean people.It definetly would not take you 10mins to wipe out MANYAME and THORNHILL for the good of my folks in MAGWEGWE WEST

Hey norman I hear what you're saying but there are only 13 combat aircraft at Manyame and one squadron of Mig 21(chinese copies) at Thornhill, maybe 3 Mig 23's in storage for lack of parts.

It would hardly be worth the ordinance to destroy such a bunch of antiques.

Haha exactly right, be like sending up an unarmed Cessna against an F22 that was fully loaded. Mig 21's haha there are blokes here that have them to fly privately as old toys!I would the maintenance on the old girls would be very second rate if at all! I get this picture in my head of mugabe pilots going at the west in a DC3 with ak47's pointed out the window trying to hit a cruise missile,would make a funny comic strip!

In my opinion the only reason Mugabe would advocate a government of national unity with Mr Tsvangirai would be to seize a great opportunity of riding on Mr Tsvangirai's coattails. Mugabe knows that once Mr Tsvangirai consents, then Zimbabwe will get all sorts of aid and as the head of that unity(God help the Zimbabweans) he will wallow in the credit that rightfully belongs to Mr Tsvangirai. I hope and pray Mr Tsvangirai stands firm in his resolve not to share power with Mugabe. Mugabe has caused the havoc so let him eat crow.

Mbeki is useless just trying to by time and also needs backup to secure another term in the office of the South African Presidency. Useless boy

If the article is anything to go by,then its a positive step,but only if: 1.The deal does not take the whole population of plitical parties like what happened in Kenya. 2.Uncle Bob abundones his dirty tricks of terrorising people of Zimbabwe. 3.The Zimbabwean constitution be amended as a matter of urgency 4.Fresh elections be held within 12 months. MDC must remember that the Zimbabwean population is counting n them,that is why they voted for them in the elections...