Zimbabwe's Opposition Seeks Foreign Intervention

[Nutmegger]

Source: Washington Post

JOHANNESBURG, May 15 -- Zimbabwe's opposition party on Thursday called for an urgent new round of regional diplomacy to resolve that nation's six-week-old electoral stalemate, saying that only foreign intervention can prevent a recent surge of political violence from developing into full-scale civil strife.

Tendai Biti, secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change, said the Southern African Development Community (SADC) must "play the midwifery role" in easing President Robert Mugabe from power in the aftermath of the March 29 election. Mugabe placed second to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in that vote but has vowed to win a runoff.

If diplomacy fails, "the next thing is a war," Biti told reporters after a news conference here. "It's not an option to us, but one day some is going to say, 'This is the only solution.' SADC must act now before rivers of dead people start to flow, as they did in Rwanda."

Mugabe's party has said a second round of voting is necessary because neither candidate won a clear majority in official results. Biti repeated claims on Thursday that those results, which were released after an unexplained delay of more than a month, were manipulated by Mugabe's party to prevent an outright victory by Tsvangirai.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/15/AR2008051501868.html?hpid=sec-world

[David__77]

1. What a terrible headline.

It makes the opposition sound like quislings. I'm sure a few of them are national sell-outs. I hope a new opposition force can arise free from bureaucratism and foreign subservience.

[Vogon_Glory]

2. Why Should We Believe ZANU-PF's Bushwah?

Why should ANY progressive be OBLIGED to believe Zimbabwe's ruling party ZANU-PF's bushwah? While I will freely admit that ZANU-PF won many fair and free elections since the former Rhodesian regime ended, Zimbabwe has been hit and hit hard by ever worsening waves of repression not starting with the white settlers as many progressive-minded naifs would like to believe, but against the ethnic Matabeles.

Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF has maintained its power through police and military brutality, by theft, by corruption, by persecuting its (mostly African) opponents, and lately by the occasional political murder. Robert Mugabe took a relatively prosperous ex-colony and turned it into an economic basket case which can no longer feed itself and where over a million of its inhabitants have been forced to flee abroad for economic reasons.

I was one of those progressives who had high hopes that independent Zimbabwe would prove to be a beacon of liberty, democracy, and prosperity throughout southern Africa and a reproach to European and American racists who gloatingly forecast ruin if the Africans ever took power. Robert Mugabe's sorry rule made those racist @3$5#!ñ!!! look like they were right, d_______ it!


Don't BS me about land redistribution! Mugabe redistributed land all right--not to the Africans who were actually working it, but to his thuggish supporters, many of whom had no interest in actually farming the land and let the crops whither and killed off the livestock.

I'd like to see Mugabe and his cronies deposed and then prosecuted for their numerous crimes against their countrymen and countrywomen. I don't think that Zimbabwe or its neighbors can afford to see Mugabe or his party remain in power. In a time when southern Africa is wracked by droughts and famine, keeping the fellow who ruined Zimbabwe's agricultural sector is a luxury that southern Africa can't afford.