PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s aide Jameson Timba said African leaders have assured the Premier that they will not accept a violent or rigged election in Zimbabwe’s next polls expected later this year.
Khulani Nkabinde
Speaking after Tsvangirai’s whirlwind tour of the continent, Timba said African presidents were yearning for a democratic Zimbabwe and their loyalties were no longer based on yesteryear solidarity.
“It is now clear that Africa is now speaking with one voice on Zimbabwe,” Timba, the Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, said.
“The leaders made it clear that they will not accept either a violent or rigged election, and they also expressed their exasperation with the shenanigans of Zanu PF.”
Tsvangirai last week toured several countries in an effort to ratchet up pressure on Zanu PF to implement key reforms ahead of elections.
The MDC-T accuses Zanu PF of reneging on reforms agreed upon at the signing of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) and hopes Sadc and the African Union can push President Robert Mugabe’s party to implement the desired changes.
Tsvangirai’s party insists that Sadc oversaw the writing of the GPA, selected a facilitator and the regional body should be “accountable for the conclusion and monitoring of the political process to a free and fair election”.
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“It is also clear that the yesteryear single voice of solidarity with an individual or the former single ruling party, Zanu PF, is now ruptured and replaced by solidarity with the democratic aspirations of the majority of Zimbabweans, who are yearning for a better life under a democratic dispensation,” Timba said.
During the last leg of his tour, Tsvangirai met Cote d’Ivoire Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan, who said Zimbabwe must avoid a human catastrophe as happened in his country.
Cote d’Ivoire plunged into a civil war in 2011 after disputed elections in that country.
Yesterday, Tsvangirai met Botswana President Ian Khama.
Tsvangirai accuses Mugabe of stalling on implementing media, electoral and security sector reforms, saying if these were not implemented before elections expected later this year, the electoral field would remain tilted in favour of Zanu PF. The MDC-T leader returned to Harare yesterday.
But Zanu PF and Welshman Ncube’s formation of the MDC have been adamant that Tsvangirai’s tour of the region was ill-advised.
