SW Radio Africa news - The Independent Voice of Zimbabwe
A spokesperson for South African President Jacob Zuma, the region’s appointed mediator to Zimbabwe’s shaky unity government, has expressed satisfaction with the way he mediated the Zimbabwean crisis. Zuma’s international adviser Lindiwe Zulu who also told the NewsDay newspaper that her country’s mediation role had officially ended on July 31st. Zulu told the paper that the Global Political Agreement stipulated that her country would be involved until Zimbabwe held elections, with GPA guarantor SADC taking over after that. “It’s now with SADC. President Zuma has done everything he was supposed to do and did exactly what the GPA said. There is a summit soon and SADC will receive a report, obviously from the chairman and chairman of the Troika, and once the report is received, SADC will decide on the way forward.” Zulu is further quoted saying: “We are absolutely satisfied in the last three-and-a-half years in keeping together the parties in doing what they had to do. We have played our role as a team and developed all the documents they used in the process.” However, questions still remain as to whether President Zuma and the region did everything they could to effectively solve the Zim question. Crisis in Zim Coalition director McDonald Lewanika said it is clear that South Africa had grown weary of the never-ending Zimbabwean crisis, and was all too happy to give up its facilitation role. “It is unfortunate that SA had given up on Zimbabwe even before their task was complete. Their mediation role started before the GPA and it doesn’t necessarily have to end with the expiry of the political arrangement. So this is not about the GPA but SA washing its hands of Zimbabwe. But the Zimbabwean crisis will not go away just because they are giving up.” Lewanika said. Lewanika said there were issues that are still outstanding from the GPA, including media reforms and concerns about a partisan security sector. “When they meet to table their final reports in Malawi on Saturday, SADC and Zuma need to tick these issues as failures in their book because they clearly failed.” However, Lewanika said Zimbabweans should recognise the difficult environment Zuma’s team was up against and “congratulate them for what they managed to achieve”.“ZANU PF is not an easy entity to work with, and the fights between the different political actors was not easy to handle but they did their best.” Lewanika said the virulent attacks directed at Zuma’s team by ZANU PF officials over the years were meant to frustrate and demoralise the facilitation team. “But they endured, although that did not translate to successful implementation of the GPA.” But in July Zulu, the leader of Zuma’s facilitation team, dared to raise her team’s concerns about Zimbabwe’s readiness to hold credible elections but was shut up by her country’s leadership. This was after Mugabe had indicated that he wanted Zuma to ‘tether her terrier’ and referred to her as a ‘street woman.’ Lewanika warned that failure to ensure that the crisis in Zimbabwe was effectively dealt with will continue to pose a problem for the region, particularly South Africa. SA is already bearing the brunt of Zim’s political instability with hoards of Zimbabweans crossing the border in search of peace and economic survival. ZANU PF has already said there was no longer any need for Zuma’s mediation, with the party’s spokesman Rugare Gumbo saying: “We have won the elections. President Mugabe’s landslide has actually put an end to facilitation, hence there is no need for facilitation in Zimbabwe anymore because the elections went well.” Most African countries have already congratulated Mugabe on his win, with Botswana however breaking ranks and calling for an independent audit of what it said was an unfair election.