TASKMASTER . . . South African President Jacob Zuma

HARARE – South African President Jacob Zuma is expected in Harare next week to press Zimbabwe’s squabbling political parties to end a power-sharing dispute holding back their coalition government, diplomatic sources told ZimOnline on Wednesday.

Zuma, who controls the region’s biggest economy and is the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s mediator in Zimbabwe, is known to favour a fresh vote as early as next year to end political stalemate in his northern neighbour.

The sources, who are senior officials at the South African embassy in Harare, said Zuma was expected to raise the issue of elections in talks with President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister (PM) Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy PM Arthur Mutambara.

“President Zuma will be coming to Zimbabwe on Tuesday next week,” said one source who spoke on condition he was not named. He added: “The visit is meant to try and find a somewhat solution to the issues related to the GPA (global political agreement or power-sharing agreement).

“It’s now more than a year, yet there are still outstanding issues which have to be addressed. The issue which might be on the agenda is the issue of elections given that the GPA is now more than a year old.”

Zuma’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya would neither confirm nor deny that his boss was planning to visit Harare next week.

Magwenya said: “I am not denying that he will visit Zimbabwe . . . all I am saying is that the reports that he will visit Zimbabwe do not originate from the presidency and I cannot confirm those reports.”

The 2008 GPA that gave birth to the Harare coalition government in February 2009 requires Zimbabwe to hold fresh elections following the drafting of a new and democratic constitution to ensure the new vote is free and fair.

But the constitutional reforms are lagging behind, prompting suggestions that the new vote that was initially expected in 2011 might have to be delayed to probably 2012 or 2013 – unless Zuma can convince the Zimbabwean parties to agree new electoral laws to enable the holding of elections before drafting of a new constitution.

Both Mugabe and Tsvangirai have in recent days urged supporters to prepare for new elections with the former, who is empowered to call elections, adding that Zimbabwe will have to go to polls whether the constitutional reform exercise flops or succeeds.

According to sources Zuma, who is coming to Harare two weeks after a trip to London where he failed to convince Premier Gordon Brown to back his call for lifting of Western sanctions against Mugabe and his top allies, will prod the Zimbabwean parties to speed up resolution of a host of outstanding issues from the GPA.

Some of the outstanding issues that have threatened to destabilise the coalition government include Mugabe’s refusal to rescind his unilateral appointment of two of his top allies to head Zimbabwe’s central bank and the attorney general’s office.

Mugabe has also refused to swear in Tsvangirai ally Roy Bennett as deputy agriculture minister while the PM’s MDC-T party is also unhappy by what it says is selective application of the law to target its activists and officials.

On the other hand Mugabe’s ZANU PF party, which insists that it has met all its obligations under the GPA, accuses Tsvangirai of not keeping a promise to lead a campaign for lifting of Western sanctions against the party’s top leaders. – ZimOnline