Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will defy the opposition and form a new government despite stalled talks on power-sharing after contested polls, the junior information minister said yesterday.
“Nothing is going to stop us from forming a new government,” Bright Matonga told South African public broadcaster SAFM, despite warnings by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that doing so would scupper the talks.
“We need to move forward, we need to make sure that Zimbabwe regains its status, we need to work on the economy. People are suffering,” Matonga said.
“That is the mandate that he [Mugabe] was given by the SADC [Southern African Development Community] and he is not going to stop forming that new Cabinet. The MDC are not serious at all,” Matonga said.
Matonga was responding to a statement by MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti that Mugabe would be violating a recent agreement between ZANU-PF and the opposition and would jeopardize power-sharing negotiations if he unilaterally formed a government.
The talks on creating a unity government to end a ruinous political crisis were suspended a little more than two weeks ago.
“You will be killing the talks. Once you form a government, forget about talks. It is a disaster and an act of insanity to think that Mugabe can go it alone,” Biti said.
“Formally, we are going to write a letter to the facilitator [South African President Thabo Mbeki] about the breaches that have occurred,” Biti said, referring to an Mbeki-mediated July 21 agreement signed by the ruling party, the main MDC and its breakaway faction.
Zimbabwe’s new parliament opened this week, five months after contested elections in which Mugabe’s party lost legislative majority for the first time since the country’s 1980 independence from Britain.
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