SW Radio Africa (London)
Tichaona Sibanda
21 February 2008
The two factions of the MDC on Thursday, jointly announced the end of dialogue with Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF. They also accused South African President Thabo Mbeki of having failed to broker a resolution to the stalled talks.
The talks completely broke down in January when Mugabe unilaterally called the polls for 29th March, leaving no time for the implementation of a new draft constitution agreed on by all parties.
The two lead negotiators representing the MDC factions, Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti, addressed a press conference in Johannesburg 'to put the record straight'. Ncube told Newsreel soon after the briefing that contrary to what people are being told, the 'talks are dead and buried'.
'If the dialogue had been successful you will have seen us signing somewhere a political agreement. You'll have seen us working together with Zanu-PF. If there was an agreement the elections would not have been called unilaterally, we would not be arguing as we are arguing right now,' Ncube said.
Ncube explained the deadlock, which SADC facilitator Mbeki failed to break, involved three issues - the date and timing of the elections, the time frame for the implementation of the agreed reforms and the process and manner of making and adopting a new constitution.
'That dialogue was about creating the conditions for free and fair elections but unfortunately the facilitator could not do anything about the three principle issues that held back the process,' said Ncube.
A year ago, Mbeki was appointed by the 14-nation SADC bloc to mediate between the MDC and Zanu-PF on political conditions necessary for free and fair polls. Despite Mbeki briefing the South African Parliament two weeks ago that the talks had been a success, the MDC have now delivered a united response to refute his claims.
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