JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s labour movement and other civic groups are planning to stage weekly marches and protests against President Robert Mugabe’s government they accuse of illegally clinging to power in Zimbabwe.

Congress of South Africa Trade Unions secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said Zimbabwe’s deepening political stalemate and rising political violence allegedly committed by Mugabe’s supporters were matters South African civil society could not afford to ignore.

Zimbabwe was plunged deeper into political crisis after electoral authorities refused to announce results of a March 29 presidential election that Mugabe’s believed to have lost to opposition Movement for Democratic Change party leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Vavi said: “COSATU is proposing that in the next three to four weeks, particularly on Saturdays, we organise huge marches with civil society, church organisations and all those that disagree with the prevailing political situation in Zimbabwe.”

The COSATU leader said Zimbabwe’s election crisis – that political analysts have warned could lead to violence and bloodshed – could not be left unresolved for too long because it had the potential to destabilise the rest of southern Africa.

COSATU-led anti-Mugabe protests are likely to increase domestic pressure on South African President Thabo Mbeki to take a more robust stance against the Zimbabwean leader.

Mbeki is the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s mediator in Zimbabwe but has been accused of failing to apply pressure on Mugabe to allow the release of election results and remove all impediments to the democratic process.

Mbeki has insisted on a policy of engagement rather than confrontation with Mugabe but several key political players and social leaders in South Africa have criticised that policy which they say has failed to yield results.

For example, Jacob Zuma, the leader of the ruling ANC party and frontrunner to succeed Mbeki as South Africa’s president in 2009, has in recent days openly broken ranks with Mbeki by publicly questioning the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s failure to release results of the presidential vote.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Thursday urged African leaders to abandon their policy of quite diplomacy favoured by Mbeki and instead tell Mugabe to quit power.

"I want to call on African leaders to show that they really care by speaking quietly to Mr Mugabe and say, 'Step down, you've been there for 20 years, man,'" Tutu told reporters in Stellenbosch.

Tutu, a long-standing critic of Mugabe, also said the United Nations should impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe because of rising political violence in the country blamed on Mugabe’s supporters.

"It is obvious that supplying large quantities of arms at this stage would risk escalating the violence, perhaps resulting in the large-scale loss of life," he said.

ZANU PF lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in 28 years in last month’s election when it garnered 97 seats compared to 110 won by the MDC and other minor opposition candidates.

But electoral officials are yet to issue the much awaited results of a parallel presidential vote, which ZANU PF acknowledges Mugabe lost to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, although they say a second round of voting is required to settle the contest.

The MDC says 10 of its supporters have been killed in political violence since the elections.

The party claims that another 3 000 supporters have been displaced from their homes, in what it describes as a war being waged by state security agents and ZANU PF militias against the people in a bid to cow them to back Mugabe in an anticipated run-off against Tsvangirai. – ZimOnline.