Zimbabwe: The Blame Game

29. Post-Power Sharing Deal Rhetoric

199 29 Post-Power Sharing Deal Rhetoric n Zimbabwe we need a dream and hope. Obama and the new administration, please help…. Desperate, The Citizen, 21 January 2009. Mugabe’s illegitimate government invites the MDC, who are legitimate, to become accomplices in Mugabe dictatorship…No deal, The Citizen, 20 January 2009. At last “The Citizen” got it right by naming Mugabe for what he is, a dictator, in the lead-in clip on page one of yesterday’s edition. But then your journalist recants by calling him president in the two articles on page seven. Inconsistent to say the least….John Fenwick, The Citizen, 21 January 2009. It boggles the mind that there are South Africans calling for our government to break relations with Israel, thousands of kilometres away, yet who are mum about atrocities conducted against ordinary folk in Zimbabwe by a cruel self-centred dictator who has absolutely no sympathy with, nor feelings for, his subjects. Talk of double standards….J S Pietersen, The Citizen, 20 January 2009. Southern Africa deserves Mad Grace and her despot husband since it seems to support their antics, including raping the country….Dave, The Citizen, 20 January 2009. Please Zuma go to court for your corruption. You can’t be the president in South Africa; this is not Zimbabwe….M Magaga, The Citizen 21 January 2008. We haven’t done enough but we are among those who have decided we will no longer be silent. The numbers (who have died in Zimbabwe), are not very different from Darfur, they are not different from what happened in Rwanda. This is not normal…. Graca Machel, The Star, 22 January 2009. Reconciliation is the key in Zimbabwe…. I 200 Carolina, The Citizen, 20 January 2009. Zimbabwe has “reached a situation where an executive authority completely ignores the orders of the courts, thus placing itself above the law, able to do whatever it wishes to citizens, ignoring all laws and constitutional rights, abusing its powers at will and with impunity”…. Zimbabwe Legal Resources Foundation, The Star, 22 January 2009 Unity Deal Uludes Zim Again As Mp’s Balk “The proposed constitutional amendment Zimbabwe’s parliament refused to take was needed to make a power sharing agreement a reality, by creating a prime minister’s post in the Unity government. This is after Mugabe and opposition factions ended 12 hours of talks with no progress on the unity deal. A special regional summit was set next week to try to break the deadlock. The MDC accuses Mugabe of trying to retain too many key cabinet and government posts in any Unity government, and of undermining the spirit of the agreement signed in September by harassing, beating and killing opposition supporters and human rights activists”….The Star, 21 January 2009. Those outstanding issues need to be addressed before we accept the amendment…. Alexander Masundire, MDC MP, The Star, 21 January 2009. A Southern African development community summit on Zimbabwe will probably take place in Joburg on Monday, after Robert Mugabe refused to have it in Botswana… The Star, 22 January 2009. Salamao, SADC executive secretary, warned that the summit would be the SADC’s last effort to break the deadlock…. The Citizen, 27 January 2009. The way forward after this summit, whether there is an agreement or there is no agreement, President Mugabe is going to form a cabinet… Bright Matonga, Deputy Information Minister, The Citizen, 27 January 2009. We are worlds apart… MDC official at the summit. The Citizen 27 January 2009. This Maybe The Last Chance After an all-night meeting, president Kgalema Motlanthe, current chairman of the Southern African Development Community(SADC), 201 announced early on Tuesday that the SADC heads of states and the three Zimbabwean political leaders had agreed that the long-delayed power sharing Unity government in that country would be launched early next month…. But then members of Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC immediately disputed that interpretation of the marathon meeting in Pretoria, saying the MDC had agreed to no such thing and that the SADC leaders had fallen far short of the MDC demands. And official statement from MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa, though reiterating that the summit had fallen “far short of our expectations” did not reject the SADC communiqué explicitly. He said that the MDC’s National Council would meet on Friday “to define the party’s position”…. The Star, 29 January 2009. It seems Tsvangirai agreed to...