MDC - Robert Mugabe - Zimbabwe

Minister: Mugabe to defy opposition and name cabinet

Thursday 28 August 2008

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is said to be determined to go ahead in forming a new government, though talks with the opposition have stalled.

Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe is expected to form a government without the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), although power-sharing negotiations are still officially open.
 
"Nothing is going to stop us from forming a new government," Information Minister Bright Matonga told a South African radio.

Under a South African-brokered agreement signed on July 21st, Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the MDC entered talks to form a power-sharing cabinet with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister. The negotiations were suspended on August 12.

"Once you form a government, forget about talks. It is a disaster and an act of insanity to think that Mugabe can go it alone," said the MDC's secretary general Tendai Biti.

Appointing a cabinet unilaterally would amount to rejecting the results of last March's election, in which he lost the first round of the presidential contest to Tsvangirai before being re-elected in a controversial one-man run-off after the opposition boycotted the vote.

Support from the military

The 84-year-old president relies on support from the military and key civil servants. "The army does not want Mugabe to go because they have committed a lot of crimes in the past years and they do not want to be judged for them", Pierre Charruau, Africa editor of Courrier International magazine, told FRANCE 24. He added: "The president of the central bank said that he only obeys God and Mugabe."

Although the opposition now holds a majority in parliament, where lawmakers booed Mugabe at the opening of the parliamentary session on Tuesday, it will have a hard time trying to balance the president's power.

According to Charruau, time is the MDC's best ally. Next April's presidential election in South Africa is likely to see Thabo Mbeki, the leading mediator in the Zimbabwean crisis, replaced by Jacob Zuma. "Jacob Zuma believes it is time for Mugabe to go away", Charruau said.

According to him, international pressure could also come from Chinese leaders, who currently support Mugabe. "China has relations with South Africa, Zambia, Malawi… Those countries do not want chaos in the region", he said, hinting that they could influence the Chinese position.