Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will have to step down if any power-sharing government deal is to succeed, Britain’s Africa minister said yesterday, echoing comments from Washington.
Mugabe and Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed on Sept. 15 to form a power-sharing government, but the deal has become deadlocked as the parties fight over control of key ministries.
“Power-sharing isn’t dead but Mugabe has become an absolute impossible obstacle to achieving it,” Mark Malloch Brown told BBC radio. “He is so distrusted by all sides.”
Referring to a call on Sunday by US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer for Mugabe to step down to clear a path for the deal to go ahead, Malloch Brown said: “The Americans are absolutely right — he is going to have to step aside.”
Frazer called on southern African governments to force Mugabe from power for failing to live up to the power-sharing agreement with Tsvangirai, adding that mediation efforts by former South African president Thabo Mbeki had failed.
“We think the facilitation is over. It led to a power-sharing agreement that is flawed,” she said in Pretoria. “We think [Mugabe] has reneged on the principle of power sharing.”
Frazer, has been touring the region to press its leaders to take a stronger stand against Mugabe, said Washington had been skeptical from the beginning about the power-sharing agreement but had bowed to South African pressure to give it a chance. “Let’s acknowledge now that the power-sharing agreement hasn’t worked,” she said.
It was now time for the region’s leaders to step in and tell Mugabe to go, she said.
“It is as easy as them coming together and saying to Mugabe: ‘It’s over.’ He won’t then have the cover of saying it is the West when his brothers say ‘you are no longer our comrade,’” she said.
Frazer said other governments in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) accepted that Mugabe was no longer a legitimate leader but were reluctant to take a firmer stand against him because it would lead to the total collapse of Zimbabwe, with serious consequences for its neighbors.
“We think the country is already in collapse. [SADC leaders] were hesitant to go against Mugabe because they did not want to see the whole thing fall apart, but it has fallen apart,” Frazer said.
“SADC is losing more of its credibility the longer this situation continues,” she said.
The deadlock between Mugabe and Tsvangirai has held up any chance of ending the spiraling crisis in the southern African country, where a spreading cholera epidemic has killed more than 1,100 people and food and fuel are in short supply.
Mugabe’s government has accused former colonial power Britain and the US of trying to exploit the cholera epidemic to end Mugabe’s 28-year rule —- a suggestion dismissed by both London and Washington.
Frazer said Mugabe’s attempts to blame the West for the epidemic was evidence that he was “a man who’s lost it, who’s losing his mind, who’s out of touch with reality.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was