SADC chairman President Joseph Kabila of the DRC with President Robert Mugabe

HARARE – Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairman Joseph Kabila on Monday said he had discussed with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe the current political impasse threatening to collapse the Harare coalition administration.

Kabila, who is the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), held a five-hour meeting with Mugabe at State House in Harare after arriving on a state visit from South Africa.

“We met the President and discussed the outstanding issues but my visit is a state visit,” Kabila told reporters after meeting Mugabe.

Zimbabwe’s nine-month-old unity government that the SADC helped set up was plunged into its worst crisis more than two weeks ago when Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T announced they were boycotting Cabinet meetings to protest Mugabe’s failure to fully implement a power-sharing pact – Global Political Agreement (GPA) – that established the coalition government.

The DRC leader who was scheduled to meet Tsvangirai later in the evening said he would discuss the impasse with the MDC chief.

“The issue of nitty gritties will also be discussed with the Prime Minister,” he said.

Speaking at the same occasion Mugabe told reporters that he had briefed the SADC chair on the issues affecting the Harare administration.

“I took this opportunity to brief him on our situation and he was willing to assist . . . President Kabila naturally as chair of SADC will listen to what he regards as a mix of progress and mix of failure, he will listen,” Mugabe said.

Kabila’s visit comes 48 hours after a ministerial team from the regional bloc’s politics, defence and security organ – also known as the Troika – completed a fact-finding mission on the inclusive government.

The Troika, chaired by Mozambican President Armando Guebuza with Zambia’s President Rupiah Banda his deputy and Swaziland’s King Mswati the third member, is set to meet in Maputo, Mozambique this week to discuss Zimbabwe’s troubled coalition government.

South Africa attends the Troika’s meetings on Zimbabwe as mediator in the crisis.

Mugabe’s ZANU PF party and Tsvangirai’s MDC remain deadlocked over key appointments while the MDC also accuses ZANU PF of engaging in a campaign to persecute its supporters.

At least 17 MDC legislators have been arrested since the beginning of the year on charges ranging from theft and public violence to rape and playing music that denigrates Mugabe.

ZANU PF, in turn, accuses the MDC of reneging on a promise to push for the removal of travel bans and an asset freeze slapped by the West on its senior officials.

Meanwhile Botswana has accused Mugabe and his ZANU PF party of acting in bad faith by failing to fully implement the power-sharing agreement resulting in the MDC-T boycotting Cabinet.

In a statement at the weekend Botswana said; “Recent events in Zimbabwe wherein the MDC-T party has disengaged from the structures of the unity government, all point to the act of bad faith in the implementation of the Global Peace Agreement (GPA), on the part of ZANU-PF.”

Gaborone urged SADC to “take firm measures to ensure that the parties live up to the commitments they made under the GPA and to SADC”. – ZimOnline