Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Saturday, 31 January , 2009 08:12:00
Reporter: Andrew Geoghegan
ELIZABETH JACKSON: It’s taken almost most five months of wrangling but Zimbabwe’s Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has agreed to form government with his bitter rival Robert Mugabe.
The agreement comes as Zimbabwe’s economic and humanitarian crisis deepens.
Cholera has now killed more than 3,000 people and infected another 60,000.
The Opposition’s Movement for Democratic Change Senator David Coltart says his party is very wary of sharing government with President Mugabe.
But he’s been told our Africa correspondent Andrew Geoghegan there’s simply no other non-violent alternative.
DAVID COLTART: This is agreement is seriously flawed; there are many pitfalls that lie ahead. But we’ve believed for some time that there’s no viable alternative to it and to that extent the decision is welcomed and we must now get down to the business of trying to address the humanitarian crisis the country faces.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: The question remains though, how can the MDC possibly work with Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF when there are much distrust there?
DAVID COLTART: That’s why I say it’s a flawed agreement with many pitfalls. We are under no illusions that this is going to be a very difficult task.
Zanu-PF and Robert Mugabe have demonstrated extreme bad faith since the signing of this agreement in early September.
But I’ll come back to the point that as we look out at this political landscape we really don’t see any other viable non-violent alternative to this.
And so whilst we are very sceptical about it, whilst we understand that it is going to be exceptionally difficult to work with Zanu-PF, we simply have to try in the interests of the nation.
ANDREW GEOGHEGAN: Once government is formed in mid February what are the most immediate challenges?
DAVID COLTART: Obviously the most pressing challenge is the humanitarian crisis. Zimbabweans have had to face the combined spectres of cholera and AIDS and malnutrition.
We’ll have to get in the medications, we’ll have to try and attract medical personnel back to tackle the cholera situation.