Zuma Sends Envoys To Rescue Shaky Zimbabwe Power-Sharing Deal

Wednesday’s visit to Harare by Zuma’s team was prompted by an appeal Tsvangirai made to the South African leader – who has a regional responsibility under the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to mediate in Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deal — to help solve what he called a constitutional crisis.

Last week, Tsvangirai publicly accused Mugabe of making unilateral decisions in the 20-month-old coalition government. As a result, Tsvangirai wants diplomats posted by Mugabe to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and New York, the European Commission, South Africa, Sweden and Italy not to be accredited.

Tsvangirai threw confusion into the coalition government after he said he would not recognise the legitimacy of some 10 ministers, five judges, the attorney general, chief of police and the head of the central bank head. The prime minister charged that Mugabe appointed all of them without the consensus required by Zimbabwe’s constitution.

Charles Nqakula, one of the three delegates from Pretoria, played down the latest developments in Zimbabwe.

“We are back here as part of our monitoring exercises to check with political parties here what has happened since the last (SADC) summit [in August],” Nqakula said upon arrival in Zimbabwe on Wednesday.

“Our coming here is part of the broader task to monitor what is happening here.” He said that coming out of the SADC summit, “there was a desire to check after at least a month … to what extent the decisions of the summit had been carried forward.”

“We will hear from the people we are going to meet what decisions have been implemented,” he said.

Nqakula said the delegation would meet with Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Zimbabwe’s deputy prime minister, Arthur Mutambara. CNN