HARARE -- South African President Jacob Zuma arrived in Harare on Thursday on a mission to break a deadlock threatening Zimbabwe’s six-month old power-sharing government.Zuma arrived at the Harare International airport at 6.30 pm and was met by both President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Some of Zimbabwe’s military commanders and several government ministers were also at the airport.
Upon arrival, Zuma was immediately whisked away to Mugabe’s State House presidential palace for a state dinner with the Zimbabwean leader and Tsvangirai.
Zuma, who chairs the Southern African Development Community (SADC) that is a guarantor of Zimbabwe’s power-sharing agreement, was scheduled to meet one-on-one with Tsvangirai after the dinner.
“The arrangement is that he will attend a dinner at the State House and then meet the Prime Minister after that,“ Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, James Maridadi, told Zimonline. He declined to discuss the agenda of the meeting.
Mugabe and Tsvangirai are deadlocked over a myriad of outstanding issues, among them Mugabe’s arbitrary appointment of two top allies to head the central bank and attorney general’s department in violation of the power-sharing agreement that says such appointments should be by consensus.
Other issues include delays in swearing in of provincial governors and Roy Bennett – Tsvangirai’s appointee as deputy minister of agriculture – as well as a police crackdown on legislators from Tsvangirai’s MDC party.
Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara, who heads a breakaway faction of the MDC that is the third partner in the coalition government, wrote to Zuma over problems in the implementation of the power-sharing pact.
But Mugabe’s ZANU (PF) party about two weeks ago accused its former opposition foes of reneging on a commitment to urge Western countries to lift sanctions on the party’s senior leaders.
* Zimonline
