In a joint statement following last week’s fallout between Zimbabwe’s coalition partners – President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai – the organisations, who included UK-based Oxfam, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSN), UN's Roll Back Malaria Partnership and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Zimbabwe needs coordinated "robust leadership" to prevent a recurrence of the cholera epidemic and widespread hunger it faced last year.
"We are obviously concerned that the government of national unity continues to work," head of Oxfam-UK's operations in southern Africa Charles Abani said.
UNICEF’s Peter Salama called on Zimbabwe's leaders to overcome their political differences and "rally around the issues facing Zimbabwe's children today, and that is access to basic services" like schools and clinics, which have been devastated by the country's 10-year economic collapse.
Salama said it would be "tragic" if the current political impasse between Mugabe and Tsvangirai leads the international community to decide that the country is too risky to continue to invest in.
Tsvangirai and his MDC party last week boycotted all cooperation with Mugabe and his ZANU PF party, blaming the veteran leader’s failure to fully implement last year’s Global Political Agreement (GPA) that gave birth to the unity government.
Despite the unity government managing to restore some semblance of stability in the economy by bringing down inflation, opening schools and hospitals aid organisations still play a big role with some helping out even in prisons.
* Zimonline
