SADC holds crisis meeting on Zimbabwe

  1. Posted on Monday 26 January 2009 - 07:08
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    Choice Adams, AfricaNews reporter in Accra, Ghana
    A crisis summit in South Africa takes place on Monday to find solutions for politically and economically ailing Zimbabwe. President Mugabe meets the regional leaders for an endorsement to form a government with or without his rivals. Political pundits say his move will deepen his country's crisis.
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    Mugabe and his arch-rival Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, are at each others throat over who controls key ministries in a power-sharing government brokered in September 2008.

    Mugabe has urged the opposition to join a unity government but has made it clear he would not hesitate to name one without them. Tsvangirai has said no deal is possible unless party activists are released from jail, Reuters reported.

    The 15-state Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) summit hosted by South African President Kgalema Motlanthe hopes to break the impasse as Zimbabwe teeters on the brink of economic collapse and grapples with a humanitarian crisis, the report added.

    Similar summits have failed to push the political process forward largely because SADC is divided over how it should deal with Mugabe, analysts say. SADC members such as Botswana and Zambia have taken a tough line on Mugabe, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, but others still revere him as a former liberation hero.

    Botswana's President Seretse Khama Ian Khama, one of Mugabe's harshest critics, will also attend the summit. Ties between Zimbabwe and neighbouring Botswana became strained after Khama said a new election was the only solution to the crisis.

    Regional leaders including SADC mediator and former South African President Thabo Mbeki failed last week to persuade the rivals to form a government. Mugabe has accused the MDC of working with Western powers to oust him. He has remained defiant through several rounds of talks that have stalled over the control of cabinet ministries.

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