Zanu-pf snubs SA envoys

AIDES to President Robert Mugabe this week blocked senior South African officials from attending a key meeting about Zimbabwe’s upcoming elections.

Three envoys from the Presidency — spokesman Mac Maharaj and advisers Charles Nqakula and Lindiwe Zulu — went to Harare to attend a meeting of the joint monitoring and implementation committee.

The committee, which brings together representatives of Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF and the two factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, is intended to monitor the implementation of the country’s global political agreement.

But Mugabe’s representatives at the meeting — party negotiator Nicholas Goche and Zanu-PF politburo members Jonathan Moyo and Oppah Muchinguri — refused to allow the South Africans or envoys from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) troika to take part.

The slap in the face for President Jacob Zuma followed his call during a troika summit in Pretoria earlier this month for the committee to be activated.

“[ It] needs to be activated as a matter of priority,” Zuma told summit delegates, who included Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, Namibian Prime Minister Hage Geingob and Mozambican Defence Minister Filipe Jacinto Nyusi.

But when the committee met in Harare on Wednesday, Zanu-PF representatives objected to the presence of the South African and SADC envoys, saying it amounted to interference in Zimbabwe’s internal political processes.

One Zanu-PF official said: “Allowing them inside our meetings is like letting a marriage counsellor into the bed of a fighting couple to see how they behave inside there.”

Zulu said afterwards: “From where we are as a facilitation team there is no confusion . . . over the issue of the committee. With elections there’s contestation of any little space . . . that ’ s what is happening, a continuation of the contestation by the three parties.”