Mugabe reneges on promise to SA

Category: World News

Date Added: 13 June 2008

Dumisani Muleya

Harare Correspondent

ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe’s regime intensified repression yesterday, despite having given assurances to the South African government that it would stop the crackdown on the opposition as the presidential runoff vote approached.

Police arrested opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai while he was campaigning — and again late last night in Gweru.

He has been arrested four times in a week.

Party secretary-general Tendai Biti was detained on arrival from SA, and police raided the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association offices in a bid to pick up its activists.

Tsvangirai was released after the initial arrest. Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said Biti was being charged with treason and communicating falsehoods prejudicial to the state.

Tsvangirai has been charged with at least five treason cases.

Senior MDC officials were making frantic efforts to contact President Thabo Mbeki yesterday to secure Biti’s release. Mbeki helped last week to secure Tsvangirai's release from police detention.

Bvudzijena said Tsvangirai was taken in by the police in Kwekwe for protective detention since he recently said he feared assassination.

The house of MDC MP Takalani Matibe was attacked in Chegutu, and the home of Blessing Chebundo — also an MDC MP — was torched in rural Hurungwe by suspected state agents.

The escalation of repression — and Biti’s arrest — came barely 24 hours after Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) negotiators had agreed at talks with the MDC in Pretoria that the crackdown would stop.

The negotiators had told South African mediators and MDC representatives that Biti would be allowed to return home safely after nearly two months in SA.

Police recently said they wanted to arrest Biti for allegedly unofficially releasing presidential election results in March. It turned out yesterday that he was also wanted for treason.

He allegedly wrote a document titled The Transition Strategy which urged “regime change” in Zimbabwe.

The document allegedly revealed that the MDC wanted British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to intervene militarily in Zimbabwe. The government claims that Brown wrote to Tsvangirai promising military intervention.

The British embassy in Harare said the claim of a letter from Brown to Tsvangirai was “a clumsy fabrication”.

The MDC said the document was so poorly drafted and so unintelligible it could not have emanated from them.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa described Tsvangirai's behaviour as “treasonous" on the basis of the alleged memorandum, which the British said was a forgery.

Despite these allegations Biti — who went around Africa campaigning against Mugabe after the March polls — decided to return home after Zanu (PF) agreed that he could do so safely.

Zanu (PF) and MDC representatives met on Tuesday and Wednesday in Pretoria to discuss the runoff and violence. This was a follow-up to a meeting they had on May 30-31.

Biti's arrest threw the talks into disarray and left Mbeki with a mountain to climb in his mediation efforts.

The MDC said arresting Tsvangirai was part of Mugabe’s strategy to block him from campaigning and break his spirit.

Political violence in Zimbabwe has claimed at least 66 lives, mainly of MDC activists, sine March 29.

SA yesterday deployed its observers around the country after thy were briefed about the escalating violence.

Southern African Development Community (SADC) observers said monitoring the runoff would be a serious challenge. Monitors from western countries critical of Mugabe have been barred.

“It is a mammoth task," SADC official Tanki Mothae said before the deployment of 120 observers out of 400.

Mothae said the SADC wanted to help Zimbabwe run a free and fair poll. “This is to help the people of Zimbabwe go through this election as peacefully as possible.”

But Mothae claimed that observers had not yet received any reports of violence, despite daily incidents of brutality.

Source: Business Day