Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai used his first platform as head of government yesterday to call on Zimbabwe’s rival political parties to work together to “unite” the country.
“I, the prime minister of Zimbabwe, call ZANU-PF and MDC to unite Zimbabwe. Divisions belong to the past,” Tsvangirai said after signing a historic power-sharing deal with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
Tsvangirai got down to executive business and his first priority was a call for the economically shattered southern African country’s doors to be reopened to international aid.
PHOTO: AP
“The international aid organizations came to help our country and found our doors locked,” Tsvangirai said. “We need to unlock our doors to aid — we need medicine, food, and doctors back in our country. We need electricity, water, petrol for our vehicles, we need to access our cash from the bank.”
Over the past decade Zimbabwe’s economy has collapsed with the world’s highest inflation rate, chronic shortages of foreign currency and food, skyrocketing unemployment and widespread hunger.
Mugabe, 84, kept a straight face as the pair shook hands after the ceremony attended by several southern African leaders, while Tsvangirai did so with a beaming smile.
Precise details of how the accord was to work in practice were to be formally unveiled later yesterday.
South African President Thabo Mbeki said Mugabe will be president in the new government, while main opposition leader Tsvangirai is prime minister. A smaller opposition group’s leader Arthur Mutambara is deputy prime minister.
The deal is the result of three months of difficult negotiations mediated by Mbeki at the behest of the Southern African Development Community.
“We have to walk the same route the same way,” Mugabe said in a speech after the signing ceremony, which was attended by leaders of the 14-member regional bloc and of the African Union.
In his speech Tsvangirai said, “Our nation looks toward us ... to deliver on the commitments contained in this agreement.”
He thanked Mbeki for his efforts in finding a solution that was “acceptable to all the parties.”
Tsvangirai also thanked African and world leaders, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, “who acknowledged that the world cannot stand idly by while a member nation slides into famine and chaos.”
Tsvangirai said Zimbabweans faced the option of uniting the country and moving forward or letting the impasse “plunge our country into the abyss of a failed state.”
He saluted members of parliament for their willingness to work across party lines.
“If you were my enemy yesterday, today we are bound by the same patriotic duty and destiny,” he said.
Thousands of supporters of the two men gathered in front of the center to celebrate, waving posters, chanting slogans and singing songs. Mugabe’s supporters lifted their fists in the air in his party’s salute; Tsvangirai’s waved an open hand.
Mbeki and Tsvangirai announced a deal late on Thursday, without providing details before yesterday’s signing.
Members of the opposition gave the broad outlines on Friday, and Zimbabwean state radio confirmed their version on Sunday.
They said the agreement calls for a Cabinet with 31 members; 16 from the opposition and 15 from Mugabe’s party. That would acknowledge Mugabe’s party — accused of holding power through violence and fraud and ruining the economy — no longer has the public support it once had.
Mugabe would remain president and chairman of the Cabinet, with Tsvangirai as vice chairman. Tsvangirai would head a new Council of Ministers that will supervise the work of the Cabinet.
The EU welcomed the deal yesterday, but foreign policy chief Javier Solana said officials would probably wait until next month to consider lifting sanctions.
Millions of dollars in Western aid is expected, if Mugabe proves genuine about sharing power and beginning to end Zimbabwe’s economic and political crisis.
Some opposition members who wanted Mugabe to surrender power completely have complained the power-sharing deal does not go far enough and that it creates a complicated arrangement Mugabe could exploit, especially given the tension that exists between the two opposition factions.
Mugabe, 84, and in power since independence in 1980, and Tsvangirai, 56, are seen to have been forced into the deal by economic pressures. They have been enemies for a decade, and Tsvangirai has been jailed, beaten, tortured and tried for treason — charges that were dismissed in court.
Zimbabwe has by far the world’s highest official inflation of 11 million percent. Independent financial institutions put real inflation closer to 40 million percent and rising daily.
Although Tsvangirai “does not have absolute power, he does have substantial power,” attorney David Coltart, an opposition lawmaker, said in a message to his supporters on Friday. “This is undoubtedly historic, but we still have a long and treacherous road to travel.”
Virtually all proposed opposition Cabinet ministers “have at some stage in the last nine years been brutalized on the instructions of those they will now have to work with,” Coltart said. “Zimbabwe remains highly polarized, and it will take statesmanship on all sides to make this work.”
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