Posted on 01/26/2003 3:25:05 PM PST by Clive
Zimbabwe's main civic groups have backed the blistering attack on President Thabo Mbeki by Morgan Tsvangirai, the main opposition leader, saying they were all frustrated by Mbeki's timidity in dealing with President Robert Mugabe.
They spoke after Tsvangirai expressed his frustration with Mbeki to diplomats on Thursday, telling them that Mbeki was denying the existence of tragic circumstances in Zimbabwe and cheered Mugabe in the name of "a dubious African brotherhood".
Tsvangirai said perhaps Mbeki and his Nigerian counterpart Olusegun Obasanjo wanted Mugabe's policies to produce mass graves as adequate and sufficient definition of a crisis in Zimbabwe.
"If this is an expression of the so-called African solutions to African problems, or an early manifestation of the so-called Nepad peer review mechanism, then Africa is fated or condemned to remain a beleaguered and crisis-ridden continent for a long time to come," Tsvangirai said.
The opposition leader said his party had accepted Mbeki's and Obasanjo's offer to mediate in the Zimbabwe crisis soon after last year's disputed presidential election in good faith, hoping the two leaders were genuine about the offer.
"We now realise the offer was nothing but a cynical and cruel act of deception. The real strategy of these countries was simply to give Zimbabweans a false sense of hope and thereby buy time for Mugabe."
Tsvangirai's remarks were widely seen as ending any possibilities of interaction between his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the ANC.
Zimbabwe's largest civic group, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) said Tsvangirai's attack on Mbeki was "very justified".
"It's nauseating to see a man who leads the African Union teaming up with his ministers to do all they can to endorse a thug like Mugabe," said Professor Lovemore Madhuku, the chairperson of the NCA. Tsvangirai said Sule Lamido, the Nigerian foreign minister, and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, his South African counterpart, were in Zimbabwe this week, but that he had only learnt of their visits through the media.
'The protests are
going ahead and it's their problem if they get caught in the crossfire' Meanwhile, democracy and human rights activists in Zimbabwe have expressed outrage and revulsion at the International Cricket Council (ICC) decision to go ahead with World Cup matches in Harare despite acknowledging that the crisis in this embattled southern African country had worsened.
"It's hard to imagine that these people will enjoy playing cricket under the heavy guard of Mugabe's police and army," Madhuku said.
The Zimbabwe police have since been deployed heavily at the cricket grounds in readiness to thwart the planned protests during the cricket matches, which begin on February 9.
Augustine Chihuri, the police commissioner, has vowed to deal ruthlessly with anyone disrupting the World Cup, despite his pledge to the ICC that peaceful demonstrations will be allowed.
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