ZANU-PF supporters of President Robert Mugabe in Mahusekwa, south-east of the Zimbabwe capital of Harare. National elections will be held on Saturday, March 29, 2008.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
By Zvamaida Murwira
Courtesy of the Zimbabwe Herald
British and US attempts to place Zimbabwe’s elections on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council meeting flopped yesterday with African Union chairperson Mr Jakaya Kikwete saying Sadc was managing the situation.
Western media had reported that Britain and US would raise Zimbabwe’s electoral issue at yesterday’s joint UN and African Union Peace and Security meeting.
But Zimbabwe’s ambassador to the UN, Ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku, described the hype in the run-up to the meeting as a non-event as the global body did not include Zimbabwe on its agenda.
In a telephone interview from New York last night, Ambassador Chidyausiku said United Nations Secretary-General Mr Ban Ki-Moon had expressed concern about the delay by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission in releasing the March 29 presidential election results.
Mr Kikwete, who is Tanzania’s president, was the second to speak and pointed out that Sadc was taking care of the situation in Zimbabwe.
South African President Thabo Mbeki also later insisted that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe, effectively sealing off the case.
"So the hype was a non-event. Zimbabwe was not the focus of the meeting. People just digressed to discuss about it, but Tanzanian President Mr Jakaya Kikwete had already made a pre-emptive statement, saying Sadc was taking care of the situation in the country.
"Mr Kikwete told the meeting that Sadc was already seized with the matter and was handling it," said Ambassador Chidyausiku.
"The UN Security Council will not come up with any position on Zimbabwe because it was not on the agenda. We had, however, prepared to appraise the world body if they had included it on the agenda."
Ambassador Chidyausiku said the UN Secretary-General had urged ZEC to release the presidential election results expeditiously, adding that the world body was prepared to assist should there be any need for a run-off.
"The UN Secretary-General said the run-off should be held under the observation of international organisations, including the UN, but for the UN to come we are saying it should first be invited," said Ambassador Chidyausiku.
British Prime Minister Mr Gordon Brown said nobody believed President Mugabe won the election, an assertion that was immediately rubbished by Zanu-PF.
Chairman of the Zanu-PF media sub-committee Cde Patrick Chinamasa said the ruling party had never claimed to have met the legal threshold in terms of the electoral law which requires the winner of a presidential election to get 51 percent of the valid votes cast.
"Our position as Zanu-PF is that on the basis of the V11 forms posted at the 9 108 polling stations countrywide and which are common knowledge not only to Zanu-PF but to the MDC-T, MDC, police and observers, no candidate in the first stage of the presidential election was able to achieve the legal threshold of valid votes cast.
"The unofficial results collated point to a run-off between President Mugabe and Tsvangirai," said Cde Chinamasa.
He said Mr Brown continued to treat Zimbabwe as a colonial appendage of the British empire.
"We tell him clearly and without any ambiguity that we are not a colony of the British. We are not a member of the Commonwealth. Brown has no legal standing to speak authoritatively on the results of the Zimbabwe elections. In speaking in the manner he has done at the Security Council is in order to promote nefarious British interests undermining Zimbabwe’s due processes and misleading the international community."
Cde Chinamasa said false victory claims MDC-T has been peddling were nothing but machinations of the British intelligence services to destabilise Zimbabwe.
"As Zanu-PF our expectation is that ZEC be allowed to complete the electoral process free from external pressure and intimidation. Zanu-PF will leave no stone unturned in ensuring that every vote cast for our President is put on the President’s heap. We do not desire any votes cast for the President’s opponents and they have no right to benefit from votes cast for our President. Zanu-PF is also saying to ZEC ‘bring to justice and without fail all those that ZEC employed to run the elections who were corruptly paid British pounds to tamper with the electoral process’," said Cde Chinamasa.
The Minister of Information and Publicity, Cde Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, yesterday said efforts by Mr Brown to smuggle the Zimbabwean issue onto the UN agenda were a sign of his desperation to ensure that MDC ascends to power via the back door.
"Brown’s theatrics at the UN show that he has forgotten that Zimbabwe is no longer a British colony and he should be reminded that Zimbabwe is aware of his efforts to reverse the gains of the hard-won independence.
"Efforts to smuggle the Zimbabwean issue on the agenda of the UN are uncalled for and as a Government we will remain steadfast in ensuring that the people of Zimbabwe remain respectable for what they are and the country they fought for,’’ he said.
He added: "Brown lied about the situation in Zimbabwe yet President Mbeki, who is our neighbour, knows better than Brown, who is far away."
Britain behind Lusaka Sadc summit: Zanu-PF
Herald Reporters
ZANU-PF says the letter written by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai offering to assist him effect illegal regime change in Zimbabwe shows that the recently held extraordinary Sadc summit in Lusaka, Zambia, was at the behest of the British.
Brown wrote to Tsvangirai on April 9, 2008 pledging to use all diplomatic means to ensure Sadc was more directly involved in Zimbabwe’s elections and impose severe sanctions against Zimbabwe.
"The British government is supportive of change in Zimbabwe . . . The UK government believes that the situation is now untenable and a Zanu-PF Government is no longer relevant to the people of Zimbabwe.
"I shall be communicating with you after lobbying Sadc to make sure that a solution to the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe is reached and your electoral success is respected," Brown
wrote.
He added: "In the meantime, I can reassure you that the UK government will use its influence to bring the Zimbabwe crisis onto the United Nations Security Council. The only alternative left is to lobby for more direct sanctions against President Robert Mugabe’s illegitimate government."
Chairman of the Zanu-PF media sub-committee Cde Patrick Chinamasa yesterday said the correspondence between Brown and Tsvangirai exposed Britain as the brains behind last weekend’s Sadc summit in Zambia.
He said Zanu-PF viewed this as an unfortunate development that Sadc had wittingly or unwittingly allowed itself to be used as a tool for the British to advance British interests in the sub-region and effect regime change in Zimbabwe.
"It is evident that the extraordinary Sadc summit was held at the behest of the British, and Zanu-PF calls on (Sadc chairman) President Mwanawasa (of Zambia) not to be part of the regime change agenda against Zimbabwe.
"Sadc, which is a successor organisation to the Frontline States, should be ashamed of itself to be part of an agenda that reverses the liberation of the sub-continent. I hope the people of Sadc will wake up to this danger that is visiting the sub-region," said Cde Chinamasa.
Head of the Zimbabwe delegation to the Sadc summit Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday said the meeting was unprocedural and had taken the majority of member states by surprise because they were not consulted over the summit, which the Sadc chairman announced in the Western media before inviting his colleagues.
The letter also showed Tsvangirai was in regular contact with the British government over Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs and was openly consulting with a foreign power that was hostile to Zimbabwe’s interests.
"The UK has imposed comprehensive sanctions against Zimbabwe in contravention of international law. The correspondence confirms that Tsvangirai is not his own man and that he is working for the British interests to recolonise Zimbabwe.
"It is clear from the correspondence that Tsvangirai along with Brown are seeking an illegal regime change in Zimbabwe and on the part of Tsvangirai this is treasonous. The are no doubting consequences for acting in treasonous manner. It is also clear that Tsvangirai and the MDC-T are lobbying for even severe sanctions against this country. They want to cause more suffering for our people. They have no conscience whatsoever in being party to the machinations of the enemy to undermine our economy and cause hardships for our people," said Cde Chinamasa.
He added: "The British are driving an agenda to put their puppet at the helm of this country so that the gains of the revolution which they opposed throughout the liberation struggle can be reversed. The people of Zimbabwe will not allow this country to be taken over by a British surrogate."
Information and Publicity Minister Cde Sikhanyiso Ndlovu last night said the letter confirmed the Government’s stance that the Tsvangirai was a puppet of the British.
"This is all what we have always said that MDC is a creation of the British and Tsvangirai a puppet of the British. So Tsvangirai is a puppet of Gordon Brown.
"Brown says the situation in Zimbabwe is untenable but that is the will of the British people and not the people of Zimbabwe.
"Brown says he will push for more sanctions yet as a Government we will make sure that the people of Zimbabwe benefit from their projects we are implementing."
Tsvangirai’s bid for UK military intervention exposed
By Caesar Zvayi
MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai approached the British government over the possibility of launching a military offensive to unseat the Government because efforts to depose President Mugabe from within had failed, a top secret Memorandum of Understanding has revealed.
The shocking revelations are contained in an MDC Alliance MOU signed between Tsvangirai, and various rightwing groups in Zimbabwe and South Africa cited as the Commercial Farmers’ Union Mashonaland Branch, Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, the Democratic Alliance of South Africa, the Eugene Terre’Blanche Group on Preservation of Civilisation in Southern African States and various ex-Rhodesian elements exiled in South Africa in return for funding ahead of the just-ended elections.
Former British military chief Sir Charles Guthrie recently revealed that erstwhile British prime minister Tony Blair had contemplated a military invasion of Zimbabwe, but was advised against it.
Said Tsvangirai: ‘‘If we tackled Mugabe using (an) entirely local force the result will be disastrous . . . We cannot endorse a military option without your blessing for the obvious implications in the event of failure, we are looking at the unholy pact between corrupt governments of South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique and the let down our hopes have been subjected to by our only hope in Zambia.
‘‘This leaves any option in that order with no base to launch from but internally, and only if we have your joint guarantee of standby rescue plan.
"Our only objective hope now is in the geo-physic structure of the massive commercial farms where all classes of possible activities will be almost impossible to detect — the terrain density is very much to our hand.’’
There have been reports, over the past few months that the opposition has been training youths grouped into what it calls "democratic resistance committees" in various subversive tactics on isolated commercial farms.
Last month, Tsvangirai hired a British pilot linked to that country’s foreign intelligence service, MI6 to carry his campaign material.
The pilot was, however, arrested after flying his helicopter in Zimbabwe without filing a proper flight plan with the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe.
He was found in possession of British and South African
passports identifying him by different names, raising fears that the MDC-T was bringing in arms caches and stashing them at various white-held commercial farms throughout Zimbabwe.
Addressing his penultimate star rally at Chipadze Stadium in Bindura on March 27, President Mugabe urged Zimbabweans to be vigilant, saying the British government was clandestinely smuggling their security forces into Zimbabwe, among them the Special Air Services unit, with a view to compromising the country’s independence and sovereignty.
Efforts to get comment from the British Embassy in Harare were fruitless at the time of going to press. However, MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa disowned the document, attributing it to Government attempts to soil his party. He threatened to sue all individuals and organisations ‘‘responsible for the production of the ‘false’ documents’’.
However, Tsvangirai and Chamisa are on record as calling for Western intervention in Zimbabwe saying that was the only way to ‘‘avert Rwanda-style massacres’.’
As recently as April 9, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown replied to a letter from Tsvangirai saying he would ‘‘do everything in our capacity to ensure that the will of the Zimbabwean people is respected’’ and that ‘‘the UK government believes that the situation is now untenable and a Zanu-PF government is no longer relevant to the people of Zimbabwe.’’
Tsvangirai accused the Government of ‘‘ suppressing and expropriating those to whom gratitude is most due for the development of this country from nothing’’, as he promised to thank the former colonisers by, among other things: Repealing all land acquisition legislation, including any constitutional amendments to this effect; repealing the War Veterans’ Act; transferring all parastatals in equal proportions to UK/USA interests or their nominees, returning all land ‘‘acquired by Zanu-PF to its rightful owners and returning all settlers to places of origin except those on farms acquired via willing seller/willing buyer basis and have been fully paid for; restructuring the police (Support Unit) to 50:50 white and black members; ensuring confidence in white former commercial farmers by guaranteeing them enrolment as reserve police/paramilitary forces; and "black/white command equilibrium within the defence forces (both numbers and ranks), among other things.
He also pledged to disenfranchise rural voters by introducing educational and income/property qualifications in the right to vote in national and local elections, saying he would not give rural dwellers the title deeds he promised in his campaigns.
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