<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201442.html> Zimbabwe Opposition Leader Ready for Talks With Mugabe
By Craig Timberg Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, April 3, 2007; A15
JOHANNESBURG, April 2 -- Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said Monday he is ready to negotiate with President Robert Mugabe without any preconditions, despite ongoing abductions and beatings of anti-government activists there.
Tsvangirai, speaking at a news conference in Johannesburg, praised the decision by regional leaders last week to appoint South African President Thabo Mbeki to mediate negotiations. Tsvangirai has criticized Mbeki in the past for not pressuring Mugabe aggressively enough, but in Monday's remarks he voiced no discontent with Mbeki's selection.
"These are new circumstances. I have no doubt in my mind that the whole region is behind President Mbeki. . . . That is a positive step," said Tsvangirai, who is seeking a new constitution that ensures free and fair elections in 2008. "I am hoping that President Mbeki approaches these [negotiations] with a new perspective."
Tsvangirai, who was in Johannesburg seeking medical treatment for injuries suffered during his arrest and severe beating on March 11, announced no new plans to mount demonstrations against Mugabe but said, "The broad participation of the people is what's going to put pressure on the regime."
Zimbabwean labor leaders plan a two-day national strike beginning Tuesday. Though nominally about protecting workers' wages at a time of hyperinflation, the strike is widely seen as a test of opposition strength in the aftermath of the March 11 police crackdown. Tsvangirai was among about 50 anti-government activists arrested for attending a political rally when such meetings had been banned. Most were badly beaten, and many remain in hospitals.
In the three weeks since those attacks, more than 100 other activists have been arrested, abducted or beaten by government forces, opposition leaders say. Mugabe has threatened more violence if public protests against his rule continue.
The president has portrayed the opposition as seeking the violent overthrow of his government after nearly 27 years in power. Police have repeatedly accused Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, of orchestrating a series of bombings against police stations and other government targets over the past month.
Tsvangirai denied those allegations on Monday and called on the international community to increase pressure on Mugabe, who plans to run for reelection in 2008, to leave office. The nation is seven years into economic collapse, with some of the world's highest rates of inflation and unemployment.
"It's the responsibility of the international community to keep a crisis from escalating into a conflict," Tsvangirai said.
Also on Monday, Time magazine correspondent Alex Perry, a British citizen based in Cape Town, was freed by Zimbabwean police after paying a small fine for reporting without proper accreditation, news reports said. He had been arrested on Saturday. Reporting in Zimbabwe without government accreditation, which is rarely given, is a crime punishable by two years in prison.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2048886,00.html> Mugabe opponents fear hope is already crushed before Zimbabwe general strike
·Two-day stoppage called for today and tomorrow · Protests hit by hunger and lack of leadership
Chris McGreal in Harare Tuesday April 3, 2007 The Guardian
Zimbabwean protest Zimbabweans living in South Africa protest against conditions in Zimbabwe. Photograph: Mujahid Safodien/AP
Zimbabwe's trade unions have called a two-day national strike from this morning, ostensibly over the plummeting value of wages under rampant inflation that has left many people unable to afford the bus fare to work.
But many Zimbabweans view the strike as a demand for an end to Robert Mugabe's 27-year rule. Previous attempts to call a strike have flopped, in part because of intimidation by the police and army, but also because almost anyone with a job in a country with 80% unemployment is desperate to hang on to it.
If today's protest fails to prove a turning point it will also be because, in the eyes of many Zimbabweans, the political opposition has again missed the opportunity to capitalise on a surge of public anger at home and one of the periodic bursts of pressure on Mr Mugabe from abroad that followed the increasingly violent repression of the president's opponents.
There was a flicker of hope among many in Zimbabwe that their president may have pushed things too far. But three weeks later, Mr Mugabe appears emboldened and his opponents are still struggling to challenge him.
"The MDC [the Movement for Democratic Change opposition] promised us they would get rid of him years ago. We are waiting," said Debora Mukasa, a market trader who says she now earns only enough to give her children one meal a day. "What can we do? If we protest, the police beat us or the army shoots us. I don't know how we get rid of this man."
Many ordinary Zimbabweans say they are waiting for the MDC to lead the way. Its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, says he is waiting for the people to rise up and then he will take charge. Felix Muzambi, a member of the MDC's national executive, is among those who thinks that will not happen soon.
"People are angry but they are passive. There is trouble here and there, but they are not ready to go out and die for the cause. I think they are looking for others to do it for them. They want Mugabe to go, but it's hard to get them mobilised," he said.
The failings of the political opposition are reflected in the rise of civic organisations and church-led protests through movements such as the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, which has attempted to organise mass prayer meetings.
"I'm not one of those who believes Mr Mugabe's fall is imminent," said the leader of one prominent civic protest group, Mike Davis of the Harare Combined Residents Association. "It will probably come from a mix of pressures, but I don't think we can expect mass street protests to be a factor until his last days. It will be other internal pressures, particularly the economy, that will bring him down, when he runs out of money to spread his patronage and those in Zanu-PF realise they are going to lose everything."
Zimbabwe's Catholic archbishop, Pius Ncube, has called Zimbabweans "cowards" for not taking to the streets to confront Mr Mugabe's forces. But Mr Davis says he does not blame people for that.
"Just surviving day-to-day is so demanding for people. Some of the people I know spend four hours a day walking to work and back because the bus fare takes all their pay," he said.
"There are now more Zimbabweans working in South Africa than here. They are the kind of people who could have been expected to join protests, but they've had to leave to find work. That's provided relief for Mugabe."
Some Zimbabweans persuaded themselves that the region's leaders would tell Mr Mugabe he has to go at a summit meeting last week. But Zimbabwe's president emerged proclaiming it a great victory because his neighbours pronounced his rule legitimate and blamed Britain and its allies for Zimbabwe's problems.
Then Mr Mugabe's many dissenters reassured themselves that the ruling Zanu-PF's central committee meeting last Friday would produce a revolt against his plans for another five years in power.
But the president proved as adept as ever at outmanoeuvring his opponents, packing the meeting with dancing supporters singing liberation war songs and turning it into a rally at which he stifled all debate and engineered his confirmation by acclamation as the party's candidate in next year's election.
Many Zimbabweans say that their country cannot sustain galloping inflation and chronic unemployment and food shortages for much longer. But they do not have to look far beyond their borders for examples of how much further their own country could sink.
Citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo watched the erosion of their nation over three decades until there was hardly a proper road outside a few major cities. The telephone system, hospitals and schools rotted away. Today, most of Congo's population knows little else but the rot.
For Zimbabweans, decline is still an aberration, but there is a fear that if Mr Mugabe were to remain in power until 2013, just short of his 90th birthday, a whole generation may grow up knowing not hope but decline.
Ms Mukasa wants more for her children but doesn't see how it will come.
"I voted in the last election but I won't again. There's no one to vote for and even if you do, the government won't let them win. Someone has to help. Even God is failing us," she said. -- Yoshie