SENEGAL / ZIMBABWE: Opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai seeks African Union support for Zimbabwe crisis

Record ID: 455699

  • Title: SENEGAL / ZIMBABWE: Opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai seeks African Union support for Zimbabwe crisis
  • Date: 3rd December 2008
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Shona) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE RESIDENT, SAYING: "We get our water from here. Taps and boreholes have dried up. When the tap water was closed, people dug wells, in the wells there is no water because there is no rain. So we are all coming here, drinking and cooking water. We fetch it here. Also for washing, we bring our clothes here." CLOTHES ON GRASS BOY WASHING HANDS BOY PLAYING NEAR HIS MOTHER, WHO IS WASHING CLOTHES
  • Embargoed: 18th December 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA7B1GR3ZXY0NDM3DFTWYZUPG5Q
  • Story Text: Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai urged the world on Monday (December 1) to help end a "man-made" humanitarian crisis which has left hundreds of people dead in a cholera epidemic.
    The spreading disease has underlined the collapse of the once relatively prosperous country, where a deadlock between veteran President Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai over a power-sharing deal has delayed any hope of rescuing the ruined state.
    Tsvangirai says the recent cholera outbreak has cost more than 500 lives, and affected around 10,000 others.

    "The country is reaching catastrophic levels in terms of food, in terms of health delivery, in terms of education, everything seems to be collapsing around us," said Tsvangirai at a working lunch in Dakar with Senegal's Foreign Affairs Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio.
    The World Health Organisation (WHO) has put the cholera death toll at around 400, but Zimbabwean rights groups estimate that up to 1,000 people have died from a disease that is preventable and treatable under normal conditions.
    The health minister said on Monday (December 1) that cholera now affects nine of Zimbabwe's ten provinces.
    Mugabe's government says the health system and economy are collapsing because of sanctions imposed by Western powers it says are trying to oust him for seizing white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks.
    His critics say Mugabe, 84 and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, has ruined one of Africa's most promising economies through reckless policies and gross mismanagement.
    The power-sharing deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai in September has offered the best hope for ending the crisis, but implementing it has been held up by disputes over ministerial posts.

    "We are not able to conclude the negotiations because of these fundamental issues of difference. For instance what is equitable power-sharing? For us it means that the distribution of portfolios of responsibilities is as balanced as it can be," Tsvangirai said.
    The opposition Movement for Democratic Change accuses Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party of trying to marginalise it in the shared administration.
    Tsvangirai said the MDC would continue "peaceful democratic resistance."
    Former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan urged Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders last week to put more pressure on Mugabe and the MDC to break the impasse.
    But Tsvangirai says the African Union should get involved.

    "As guarantors of the agreement they should make sure that SADC reports on progress or the lack of it on the current crisis," Tsvangirai said.

    "If the African Union does not have the capacity, the institutional capacity, to deal with all these conflicts then why do we need that institution?" Tsvangirai added.
    Mugabe was re-elected this year in a one-man poll that was boycotted by Tsvangirai, citing attacks on his followers. Mugabe accuses his foes of planning to reverse his land reform programme of taking over white-owned farms.
    The government said it would defy the ruling of a SADC tribunal that the land seizures were illegal under international law and should be stopped.
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