SW Radio Africa (London)
Tichaona Sibanda
7 September 2009
A special summit on Zimbabwe to review the progress of the power-sharing government will soon be held in Maputo, Mozambique, eight months after such a move was first suggested by an earlier SADC summit.
A source in Kinshasa told SW Radio Africa on Monday that this extraordinary summit on Zimbabwe will be held in the coastal city of Maputo in three weeks' time.
The decision to remove Zimbabwe from the agenda at the current SADC summit in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was received as 'good news' by an MDC delegation led by Morgan Tsvangirai. The MDC leader spent part of the day holding one-on-one meetings with SADC leaders on the sidelines of the summit.
The 15-member body, which kicked off its two-day summit on Monday, had been expected to discuss a raft of issues relating to the deal between Tsvangirai's MDC and Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF. The issue of Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa's unilateral move to pull out of the SADC Tribunal will now be dealt with in Maputo.
Human rights lawyer Dewa Mavhinga, who is in Kinshasa, told us the decision to defer discussion on Zimbabwe was to give SADC member states more time to focus on the core issues troubling the inclusive government.
'This will give the Heads of State and Government ample time to address the question of Zimbabwe as it is, without clouding it with other issues, like the conflict in Madagascar and peace making efforts in the eastern DRC,' Mavhinga said.
'I think this is a better way of addressing outstanding issues, rather than try to rush through discussion on Zimbabwe because of time limits, as the summit has a host of other issues to tackle. So in three weeks, it will be a special summit on Zimbabwe only,' Mavhinga added.
During a SADC summit in Pretoria in January, the regional bloc undertook to conduct a six-month review of the inclusive government and the allocation of ministerial mandates to the respective parties.
The SADC group comprises Angola, South Africa, Botswana, Mauritius, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, the DR Congo, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Madagascar was suspended because of current political upheaval.
The MDC and Zanu-PF have asked SADC to resolve outstanding issues. These include a dispute over Mugabe's unilateral appointment of the attorney general and central bank governor, the ongoing arrest and imprisonment of MDC politicians, plus various others issues such as Mugabe's reluctance to swear in the Deputy Minister of Agriculture Roy Bennett.
The Attorney-General, Johannes Tomana told the Zimbabwe Standard over the weekend that he will not to resign from his post, even if it means the collapse of the inclusive government. He said his appointment was above board and was constitutional.
The AG said if the GNU collapses because of the controversy surrounding his appointment it would not be his fault and he would not feel guilty.
'Politicians are the ones that would have let the nation down. I won't feel bad. I am not a politician. The nation would have been let down, but not by me,' Tomana is quoted as saying.
The power-sharing government was established to try to end the country's political and economic crises. During the run up to the June presidential election last year tens of thousands of MDC supporters across the country had their homes and villages destroyed by ZANU PF youths and purported war veterans, to intimidate them from voting against Mugabe.
The Tsvangirai MDC said over 200 of its supporters were killed, countless thousands were badly tortured and another 500,000 were displaced by Mugabe's security forces, ZANU PF youths and war veterans.
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