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VOA
By Blessing Zulu and Carole Gombakomba
Washington
21 December 2007

Interview With Glen Mpani
Listen to Interview With Glen Mpani
Discussion With Abel Chikomo and David Coltart
Listen to Discussion With Abel Chikomo and David Coltart

Zimbabwean ruling party and opposition negotiators engaged in crisis resolution talks who were expected to resume their discussions on Friday have pushed off their next round of negotiations until January, sources in Pretoria, South Africa, said.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa asked to be excused saying he would be attending a weekend memorial service for his son, who died recently. On the opposition side, Secretary General Tendai Biti of the Movement for Democratic Change faction of Morgan Tsvangirai also indicated that he has family business to attend to.

Pretoria sources said the talks will now resume January 2, adding that when the two sides return, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, mediator in the talks on behalf of the Southern African Development Community, will seek to break the impasse that has arisen in the talks despite apparently significant progress on a number of issues.

The opposition says a new constitution must be adopted before elections are held, but the ZANU-PF team says there is not enough time, given President Robert Mugabe’s recent declaration that elections must be held in March “without fail.”

Opposition officials say ZANU-PF reneged on a promise to adopt a new constitution before the elections in exchange for support by the opposition for a constitutional amendment overhauling the electoral system passed in September.

Ruling party sources say their delegates will offer to prove their commitment to a new constitution by publishing it officially - though not implementing it until after elections.

By Robyn Dixon,
Los Angeles Times
December 18, 2007

POLOKWANE, SOUTH AFRICA — With a presidential election scheduled for March, the Zimbabwean government Monday announced changes to security and media laws that it has used in the past to suppress demonstrations and close independent newspapers.

Analysts quickly countered that the measures would not ensure a free and fair vote unless the election was delayed in order for newspapers to reopen and for the other reforms to have an effect.

Opponents of President Robert Mugabe have long sought changes to the controversial laws, but Mugabe’s insistence on pressing ahead with the scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections would limit the usefulness of the alterations, according to both factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC.

Mugabe, 83, last week was endorsed by the ruling ZANU-PF party for reelection as president, and has repeatedly stated that the elections will take place in March whether the opposition is prepared or not.

The opposition has accused the government of dragging out talks on political reforms, while rushing ahead to redraw electoral boundaries and create a raft of gerrymandered seats.

The changes would theoretically make it easier for opposition groups to hold protest rallies, for independent newspapers to publish and for journalists not accredited by the government to work. But more time is needed for them to have an effect, analysts say.

“The bottom line is postponing the election and operationalizing the new constitution: These are the two key things that are needed for an election,” said Sydney Masamvu, South Africa-based analyst on Zimbabwe with the International Crisis Group. “What Mugabe is trying to do is to push through some cosmetic reforms. Everything will be reading brilliantly on paper, but when you look on the ground, nothing’s changed.”

The Star
December 17, 2007
By Peta Thornycroft

Lusaka - Although Zimbabwe’s repressive media and public assembly laws were set to be profoundly reformed in parliament, a political agreement between Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has not been agreed.

It may never be agreed unless President Robert Mugabe delays elections way beyond the due date of March and allows them to be held under a new constitution.

Yesterday, Zanu-PF leaked information via the state-controlled Sunday Mail that an agreement was due to be signed with the MDC following nearly nine months of South African-facilitated talks.

However, MDC executives have agreed that while they will vote for the reformed laws tomorrow, there will be no agreement. “We will support the amendments because there are great improvements to present laws, but we will be asking our negotiators to go and see (President Thabo) Mbeki to say that Mugabe is being too difficult, impossible,” an official said.

David Coltart, the MDC’s founding legal secretary, who is in SA attending a conference, said yesterday: “Unless there is an agreement regarding a new constitution being introduced prior to the election and a reasonable time period between its introduction and holding an election, then any agreement will not be possible.

“I fear this is yet another cynical ploy of Zanu-PF to subvert the good intentions behind the mediation process.” - Independent Foreign Service

The Times
December 3, 2007

By Martin Fletcher

Robert Mugabe is “probably the cleverest politician in the world”, a
European diplomat conceded.

A prominent opponent of the President of Zimbabwe said: “If he was a chess
player he would be a grand-master, if not a world champion.”

The great fear among many of Mr Mugabe’s opponents is that the wily
octogenarian may spring a propaganda coup about his future on the EU-Africa
summit this week. They are concerned that he is close to clinching a deal
enabling him to win reelection next March with a veneer of legitimacy - then
press for an end to the international sanctions against his regime. Indeed,
they believe that he would desperately like to unveil the outline of such a
deal at the Lisbon summit and make Gordon Brown look churlish for boycotting
the event.

Such a deal is being overseen by Thabo Mbeki, the South African President,
who flew to Harare for an unexpected meeting with Mr Mugabe last Thursday.

Mr Mbeki has been mediating talks between Mr Mugabe’s ruling Zanu (PF) party
and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change since the summer, and Zanu
(PF) appears ready to offer concessions. Mr Mugabe’s critics, however, are
deeply divided on whether they will be genuine or merely cunning window
dressing.

For example, the two sides have already agreed a constitutional amendment
that, among other things, abolishes the President’s right to nominate 30 MPs
and increases the number of elected seats from 120 to 210. Most of those new
seats, though, would be in rural constituencies where the ruling Zanu (PF)
is strongest.

From The Times
December 1, 2007
By Martin Fletcher

As the people of Zimbabwe are ground down by poverty and brutality, Robert Mugabe is offered a welcome at the international table

We knew Sarudzai Gumbo was still sick, but nothing prepared us for what we found. The seven-year-old was lying alone and neglected in a dirty sideroom in a Harare hospital.

Her head was a mass of septic wounds. Two large cancers were devouring the right side of her face. She had lost the sight of one eye and the other was gummed up. A filthy, blood-stained hat concealed untold horrors on her scalp – she screamed with pain when we tried to remove it. Flies hovered around her lesions. The stench of her putrefying flesh was overpowering. She weighed only 36lb (16.3kg).

The Times highlighted Sarudzai’s plight in March after discovering her in Mbare, a Harare slum. Her family was living on wasteland because its home had been destroyed by President Mugabe’s Operation Murambatsvina (“Clean Up Trash”). Her parents’ livelihoods had been ruined by the regime’s ban on street vendors. They both had Aids, as did Sarudzai, whose face was disfigured by open sores.

Readers sent in £7,500 to try to help her – funds forwarded to the Jesuit mission in Mbare – and Sarudzai was sent to an Aids clinic. But her mother died in April and her father took her away to the ancestral village and – fatally – interrupted her treatment. Sarudzai was transferred to Parirenyatwa Hospital just as Zimbabwe’s healthcare system was imploding.

As with every other hospital, the doctors and nurses who were there have left in droves for better-paid jobs abroad, their salaries at home rendered almost worthless by hyperinflation. There are no anaesthetics, drips, painkillers, antiretroviral drugs, blood for transfusions or even bandages. This is a shell of a hospital – a place where patients are left to die.