PRETORIA – United States (US) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday said the huge number of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa was testimony to the failure of leadership in Harare.
“South Africa is very aware of the challenges posed by the crisis in Zimbabwe because South Africa has 3 million refugees from Zimbabwe and everyone of those refugees represents the failure of the Zimbabwe government to take care of its own people and that’s a burden that South Africa has to bear,” said Clinton.
She was addressing journalists at the Presidential Guest House in Pretoria after a meeting with South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana Mashabane.
Clinton arrived in South Africa last Thursday night as part of a seven-nation African tour which kicked off in Kenya last Tuesday. High on her agenda was the issue of the fractious unity government in Zimbabwe which she said must move quickly to implement reforms.
She said her government will continue exerting pressure on the country’s leadership through sanctions to try and force a change in attitude.
“We are working with South Africa towards a free democratic Zimbabwe. Obviously South Africa, on the door steps of Zimbabwe, has a lot of contact with all the different players in Zimbabwe. The minister and I talked about the best ways we can try to productively create a better outcome for the people of Zimbabwe,” said Clinton.
“We are attempting to target the leadership of Zimbabwe with sanctions that we think might influence their behaviour without hurting the people of Zimbabwe. We are going to be closely consulting as to how best to deal with what is a difficult situation for South Africa but mostly for the people of Zimbabwe,” she added.
Washington earlier this year extended targeted sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and members of his ZANU PF party’s inner circle and Clinton has in the past said that the only solution for Zimbabwe lies in the removal of Mugabe from power.
But in a move that baffled his supporters within and without the borders of Zimbabwe, opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)leader and Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has said there can be no solution for the the country if Mugabe is left out of the process. Tsvangirai says the 85 year old dictator is "the problem and is also part of the solution."
Tsvangirai's rise to power and indeed of his party hinged on the call of Mugabe stepping down which even saw the opposition leader get arrested and charged with treason for calling for Mugabe "to go peacefully or we will remove him violently." He was to be later acquitted of the charge.
And in his recent tour of the western world he called for the removal of sanctions claiming that the situation in Zimbabwe was under control while racist motivated invasion of white owned farms still rages with the opposition party seemingly turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to these gruesome acts, thereby raising speculations among the masses that the MDC has lost the plot and has been sucked in by Mugabe's ZANU PF party.
South African Foreign Minister Mashabane said her government, which under the leadership of ex-president Thabo Mbeki brokered Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deal, will continue working with Zimbabweans to ensure the quick and full implementation of the political agreement signed between ZANU PF and the two MDC parties.
“We promise to continue working with the people of Zimbabwe to implement the agreement that they signed – the made-in-Zimbabwe-for-Zimbabweans agreement. We want them to fast track the actual implementation of the agreement,” said Mashabane.
South African President Jacob Zuma, who was due to meet Clinton in the coastal city of Durban today, has taken a harder line on Zimbabwe than his predecessor Thabo Mbeki, but the US wants more.
The US, troubled by what it sees as an absence of reform in Zimbabwe, has no plans either to offer major aid or to lift sanctions against Mugabe and some of his supporters, accusing them trampling on democracy and ruining a once-vibrant economy.
Before any of that can happen, Washington wants more evidence of political, social and economic reforms by Mugabe and the government he shares uneasily with opposition leader and now Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
– ZimOnline and Simba Nembaware
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Msika was voice of reason: Tsvangirai
HARARE – Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Thursday said Zimbabwe’s late Vice President Joseph Msika, who died in Harare on Wednesday, was a “voice of reason” in the country’s fragile coalition government.
“He has left a legacy. He was one of the senior people in politics who had the voice of reason,” Tsvangirai told mourners at the veteran politician’s home in Harare.
Msika, a nationalist leader and arguably the most senior PF ZAPU party member that merged with President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF in 1987, was one of the previous government’s moderate politicians who clashed with his counterparts especially at the height of the land invasions.
Msika was among a few senior ZANU PF officials to speak openly against the often violent seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks which started in 2000 and have reduced Zimbabwe from a breadbasket to a basket case.
He however appeared on numerous times on state television using vernacular vulgar language to undress white commercial farmers and on one occassion he labelled the country's opposition party and its supporters as "imigodoyi" literally explained as skinny smelling dogs that cannot fend for themselves.
Nonetheles, Tsvangirai said he had a cordial relationship with Msika – whom he described as a father because they shared the same totem – since the formation of an inclusive government with Msika’s ZANUPF last February, offering the country its best opportunity in a decade to wriggle out of economic and political crisis.
Tendai Biti the Minister of Finance and the Secretary General for the opposition MDC has said the late vice president was a man of valour whose “untainted by corruption” and “his name stayed away from scandal."
But Tsvangirai’s MDC party accuses Mugabe of flouting last year’s power-sharing agreement that gave birth to the new administration as shown by the veteran leader’s refusal to rescind his unilateral appointment of two of his alleged cronies to the key posts of central bank governor and attorney general.
The MDC also accuses hardliner members of Mugabe’s inner circle of ordering the police – who they still control – to arrest the former opposition party’s members of parliament on trumped up charges in a bid to whittle down the party’s slim parliamentary majority.
At least five MDC members either have been convicted in recent weeks or face various charges and risk losing their parliamentary seats if committed to jail for six months or more.
The 86-year-old Msika, who was one of two vice presidents of Zimbabwe and ZANU PF, died at a private clinic in the capital after being in and out of hospital since 2005.
In a statement issued yesterday by its secretary general Tendai Biti, the MDC expressed shock at Msika’s death, saying the country had “lost a true revolutionary and a selfless leader who spent more than half his life fighting for the liberation of our country”.
“He has died in the phase of hope for the country he dearly loved; hope emanating from the formation of an inclusive government which has given Zimbabweans an opportunity for national healing and reconciliation,” the MDC said.
“That he has died a week before Heroes’ Day is enough testimony that he was a true hero unto himself; a man of valour who lost precious decades in foreign lands and in the forests so that justice would visit the land of his birth.
“The only befitting tribute we can pay to Hon Msika is when we create a truly just and free society where Zimbabweans of all political shades live side by side without fear; a Zimbabwe where we all feel we live in one country which gives us pride and which must create hope and a better future for all,” the party said.
Meanwhile Tsvangirai was warmly received at the late Vice President’s Mandara home, where he was welcomed by ZANU PF ministers John Nkomo (National Healing and Reconciliation), Walter Mzembi (Tourism) and Florah Bhuka, Minister of State in the late vice president’s office.
One of Msika’s sons who addressed mourners said: “We are lucky that our father was vice president and now our brother is prime minister.”
– ZimOnline and Simba Nembaware
“He has left a legacy. He was one of the senior people in politics who had the voice of reason,” Tsvangirai told mourners at the veteran politician’s home in Harare.
Msika, a nationalist leader and arguably the most senior PF ZAPU party member that merged with President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF in 1987, was one of the previous government’s moderate politicians who clashed with his counterparts especially at the height of the land invasions.
Msika was among a few senior ZANU PF officials to speak openly against the often violent seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks which started in 2000 and have reduced Zimbabwe from a breadbasket to a basket case.
He however appeared on numerous times on state television using vernacular vulgar language to undress white commercial farmers and on one occassion he labelled the country's opposition party and its supporters as "imigodoyi" literally explained as skinny smelling dogs that cannot fend for themselves.
Nonetheles, Tsvangirai said he had a cordial relationship with Msika – whom he described as a father because they shared the same totem – since the formation of an inclusive government with Msika’s ZANUPF last February, offering the country its best opportunity in a decade to wriggle out of economic and political crisis.
Tendai Biti the Minister of Finance and the Secretary General for the opposition MDC has said the late vice president was a man of valour whose “untainted by corruption” and “his name stayed away from scandal."
But Tsvangirai’s MDC party accuses Mugabe of flouting last year’s power-sharing agreement that gave birth to the new administration as shown by the veteran leader’s refusal to rescind his unilateral appointment of two of his alleged cronies to the key posts of central bank governor and attorney general.
The MDC also accuses hardliner members of Mugabe’s inner circle of ordering the police – who they still control – to arrest the former opposition party’s members of parliament on trumped up charges in a bid to whittle down the party’s slim parliamentary majority.
At least five MDC members either have been convicted in recent weeks or face various charges and risk losing their parliamentary seats if committed to jail for six months or more.
The 86-year-old Msika, who was one of two vice presidents of Zimbabwe and ZANU PF, died at a private clinic in the capital after being in and out of hospital since 2005.
In a statement issued yesterday by its secretary general Tendai Biti, the MDC expressed shock at Msika’s death, saying the country had “lost a true revolutionary and a selfless leader who spent more than half his life fighting for the liberation of our country”.
“He has died in the phase of hope for the country he dearly loved; hope emanating from the formation of an inclusive government which has given Zimbabweans an opportunity for national healing and reconciliation,” the MDC said.
“That he has died a week before Heroes’ Day is enough testimony that he was a true hero unto himself; a man of valour who lost precious decades in foreign lands and in the forests so that justice would visit the land of his birth.
“The only befitting tribute we can pay to Hon Msika is when we create a truly just and free society where Zimbabweans of all political shades live side by side without fear; a Zimbabwe where we all feel we live in one country which gives us pride and which must create hope and a better future for all,” the party said.
Meanwhile Tsvangirai was warmly received at the late Vice President’s Mandara home, where he was welcomed by ZANU PF ministers John Nkomo (National Healing and Reconciliation), Walter Mzembi (Tourism) and Florah Bhuka, Minister of State in the late vice president’s office.
One of Msika’s sons who addressed mourners said: “We are lucky that our father was vice president and now our brother is prime minister.”
– ZimOnline and Simba Nembaware
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