Zimbabwe

Government and opposition start talks in South Africa

Article published on the 2008-07-10 Latest update 2008-07-11 12:13 TU

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe greets MDC representative Arthur Mutambara.
(Photo : AFP)

In a major breakthrough, Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party and opposition Movement for Democratic Change began talks Thursday in South Africa in a bid to tackle the political crisis. The MDC had until now refused to enter talks with the Mugabe regime.

While the fact that talks are even happening is progress for South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been mediating the crisis for the last year, it remains unclear what issues are actually being discussed.

Nathan Shamuyayira, the Information Secretary for the ZANU-PF, told RFI that he wasn't aware of the day's agenda, and wouldn't know until the day was out.

But Zimbabwe's civil society groups remain pessimistic about the possibilities for real change.

“On the one hand, ZANU-PF want to believe that President Mugabe is the current president of the country after the election, while Tsvangirai and the MDC still want to see a new election … they might be buying time for the ruling party,” Lovemore Maduku, head of the Zimbabwe's civil society group National Constitutional Assembly, told RFI.

“What would make the talks collapse would be any discussion of power sharing,” Maduku said, counseling less contentious issues like election reform, to get negotiations rolling. “Talk about reform…that would be the way to go,” he said.

Meanwhile the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has announced that 113 of its supporters have been killed in politically related violence in Zimbabwe.

The latest deaths mean that 24 have died since the first round of voting in March, when Mugabe was re-elected into power.