By Batsirayi Muranje 

HARARE – Two senior officials of Morgan Tsvangirai-led opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party will today meet Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi over rising political violence in the country. 

The MDC last week accused President Robert Mugabe’s government of stepping up violence against the opposition party ahead of next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections, a charge Harare denies. 

Mohadi last week invited Tsvangirai for talks after the MDC threatened to pull out of South Africa-led talks between the opposition party and the ruling ZANU PF party over alleged political violence. 

Sources within the MDC said yesterday that Tsvangirai will not attend the meeting with Mohadi but will be represented by the party’s home affairs secretary, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, and Mutare Central legislator Innocent Gonese. 

In a letter to Tsvangirai last week, Mohadi demanded that the opposition party furnish him with specific cases of violence against the party’s supporters at today’s scheduled meeting. 

The MDC says cases of political violence against its supporters have escalated despite ongoing dialogue with the government to seek an end to Zimbabwe’s political stalemate. 

South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has since last March been leading a Southern African Development Community (SADC) initiative to push for a negotiated settlement to Zimbabwe’s eight-year political crisis. 

Last week, the MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa suggested that the opposition party could pull out from the talks if violence, arbitrary arrests and harassment of the opposition did not stop. 

“It cannot be summer time in Pretoria while here in Zimbabwe, our supporters continue to live under a winter of violence,” Chamisa told journalists. 

Sources within the MDC in Harare say Mbeki, who has in the past said the talks were progressing “very well,” was exerting pressure on the Zimbabwean government to stop the political violence and save the fragile talks. - ZimOnline