Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe's power-sharing agreement allows President Robert Mugabe to appoint a 31-member Cabinet while opposition parties will have a majority of the posts, officials from Mugabe's party and the opposition said.
``The deal is significant as the positions were so far apart, so in that sense it represents progress,'' Mike Davies, an analyst at Eurasia Group in London, said in a telephone interview. ``But the real issues are in the details of the deal.
It appears to be a complicated power-sharing agreement that will be difficult to manage, and it leaves significant amounts of executive power with Mugabe.''
The accord, reached yesterday in Harare, the capital, ended a six-month deadlock and will allow the government to focus on the southern African nation's decade-long recession and the world's highest inflation rate, 11.2 million percent.
Under the agreement, Morgan Tsvangirai, the 56-year-old leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, will become prime minister, heading a council of ministers, said a senior member of the MDC's governing national executive and two members of the politburo of Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. The three officials declined to be identified because the deal is confidential until it's announced on Sept. 15.
``The MDC is going into this agreement as the junior partner because Mugabe remains as head of state and head of government,'' constitutional lawyer Lovemore Madhuku, chairman of the anti-government National Constitutional Assembly, said in a telephone interview from Harare. ``It seems the MDC have capitulated, certainly more than Mugabe and Zanu-PF, because it looks initially like Tsvangirai's powers are cosmetic.''
Power
It's unclear who will have the power to fire cabinet ministers.
Tsvangirai will have two deputies, including one from a faction of the MDC led by Arthur Mutambara, the officials said.
Zanu-PF will have 15 posts in the Cabinet, the MDC 13 and the Mutambara faction three, they said. The details of the agreement, reached following pressure on Mugabe, 84, from neighboring countries and the African Union, were earlier reported by Johannesburg's Star newspaper.
A former labor leader, Tsvangirai, won the most votes in a March 29 presidential ballot, but the state-appointed Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said he didn't surpass the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. His boycott of the June runoff over allegations of state-sanctioned violence against his supporters enabled Mugabe to extend his 28-year rule.
MDC Factions
The two MDC factions won control of the lower house of parliament in March elections, the first time Zanu-PF had been defeated since taking power in 1980 when Zimbabwe, a former U.K.
colony known as Rhodesia, gained independence.
Under yesterday's agreement, Tsvangirai's council of ministers will be responsible for the day-to-day governing of Zimbabwe, the officials said. The Cabinet will review the work of the council, the official said, without elaborating.
The accord is a ``significant step forward,'' European Commission spokesman John Clancy told reporters today in Brussels. The commission is ``cautiously optimistic,'' he said.
Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara began talks on power sharing on July 21. The negotiations were mediated by South African President Thabo Mbeki on behalf of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community.
`Made in Zimbabwe'
``It is inevitable that it will succeed,'' Mbeki said of the agreement. ``This agreement was made in Zimbabwe, it is owned by the Zimbabwean people and the rest of the world needs to respect that,'' Mbeki said in a televised news conference from Harare late yesterday.
The agreement should ``pave the way for a durable peace and recovery'' in the country, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement yesterday. He said he hoped it will contribute to a ``rapid improvement in the welfare and human rights of the people of Zimbabwe, who have suffered for long.''
Mwana Africa Plc, Central African Mining & Exploration Co.
and other companies with mining interests in Zimbabwe rose after announcement of the agreement.
Mwana, which controls nickel mines in the country, rose as much as 5 pence, or 20 percent, to 30.5 pence in London and traded at 28.75 pence at 8:11 a.m. local time. Central African, which plans to develop platinum mines in the country, jumped as much as 2.25 pence, or 10 percent, to 24.25 pence.
In 1987, Mugabe signed a power-sharing accord with Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union after Zimbabwean troops put down an armed insurrection by Nkomo's supporters in the southern Matabeleland and Midlands provinces. As many as 20,000 people are estimated to have died in what are known as the Gukurahundi massacres. Gukurahundi means spring rain, or rain that washes away the chaff.
Mugabe, whose party is predominantly Shona speaking, absorbed Nkomo's mainly Sindebele-speaking Zapu to form Zanu-PF party. Its stated aim was to form a one-party state guided by Marxist-Leninist policies. |
