Zimbabwe’s main opposition party appealed yesterday for help from regional bloc Southern African Development Community (SADC) to unlock stalled power-sharing talks as Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe threatened to form a new Cabinet.
“It is very clear that the deadlock in the current dialogue has to be unlocked,” Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told SA FM radio.
“And to be unlocked we need the help of SADC and the helping hand of the mediator, [South African] President Thabo Mbeki,” he said.
“It is better to be talking than fighting. Our country is so important, so precious. We need to resolve all our differences through dialogue for prosperity and stability in the country,” he said.
Mugabe was quoted in state media on Thursday as saying that he would move ahead and form a government if Tvsangirai did not sign a power-sharing deal on Thursday.
“We are a government, and we are a government that is empowered by elections,” the Herald, a governing party mouthpiece, quoted Mugabe as telling reporters on Wednesday when he was in Zambia for the funeral of Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa.
“So we should form a Cabinet. We will not allow a situation where we will not have a Cabinet forever,” he said. “If after tomorrow [Thursday], Tsvangirai does not want to sign, we will certainly put together a Cabinet. We feel frozen at the moment,” he said.
Tendai Biti, Tsvangirai’s chief negotiator in the power-sharing talks, said on Thursday that the Herald story was the only word the MDC had had of any plans by Mugabe to unilaterally name a Cabinet. That raised the possibility the Herald story was an attempt by Mugabe to pressure the opposition to try to break a deadlock in the talks.
Chamisa said yesterday it would be “tragic” if Mugabe proceeded to form a Cabinet without the power-sharing talks being concluded.
“In fact, he will be committing a political suicide because there is no way that that cabinet is going to be functional because it does not have a legitimacy, the endorsement and the support of the people as well as the MDC,” he said.
Talks between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, whose MDC holds a parliamentary majority, were deadlocked in mid-August over Mugabe’s desire to retain control of the security forces, the opposition said. Last ditch attempts to revive the negotiations by Mbeki failed last week.
Tsvangirai rejected a deal that would have seen security ministries reporting to Mugabe and economic and social ministries to himself.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS