Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will meet tomorrow with the two sides drawing nearer to a power-sharing agreement, a newspaper reported yesterday.
The Harare meeting will take place with South African President Thabo Mbeki, the mediator for the talks, expected to fly to Zimbabwe this weekend, Business Day reported.
Citing unnamed sources, the paper said that the meeting “would decide whether ZANU-PF and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change [MDC] would come up with a final power-sharing deal this weekend.”
Mugabe’s spokesman on Thursday called reports of a deal in power-sharing talks “nonsense”, but both he and South Africa said negotiations over the country’s crisis were advancing.
“All this talk about an agreement that has supposed to have been reached, which is being reported, is utter nonsense,” George Charamba said, saying Mugabe had asked him to relay the message.
Power-sharing talks following Mugabe’s controversial re-election began in South Africa after Zimbabwe’s political rivals signed an accord on July 21 laying the groundwork for negotiations.
The two sides are under heavy international pressure, including from within Africa, to resolve a crisis that has ruined the once prosperous economy and flooded neighbouring states with millions of refugees.
An opposition spokesman said on Thursday that Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, leader of a smaller faction of the MDC, would hold a meeting in Harare soon.
Mutambara spokesman Edwin Mushoriwa said negotiators were expected to return home from South Africa yesterday and the meeting would take place afterward.
Zimbabwe’s political crisis intensified after Mugabe’s victory in a June 27 presidential run-off election widely condemned as a farce.
Tsvangirai boycotted the run-off after finishing ahead of Mugabe in the March first round, citing violence against his supporters that had killed dozens and injured thousands.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS