Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai was expected yesterday to name his Cabinet team to serve in a unity government with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, MDC officials said.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said Tsvangirai would make an announcement at 10am, but did not provide details.
Senior MDC officials said party secretary-general Tendai Biti was frontrunner to be finance minister, a post that would charge him with reviving Zimbabwe’s collapsed economy.
“Barring any last minute changes I can say Biti will certainly be the man at finance,” an MDC official said.
Tsvangirai, whose MDC party agreed to form a coalition government with Mugabe last week, will be sworn in as prime minister today under the terms of last year’s power-sharing deal.
A Cabinet, comprising ministers from Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, Tsvangirai’s MDC and a splinter MDC group, will be sworn in on Friday.
Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of southern Africa and one of the continent’s most promising economies but hyperinflation means prices now double every day, unemployment is rising fast and the currency is virtually worthless.
The finance minister will need to quickly spell out his plans for reviving the economy to reassure anxious Zimbabweans and to woo skeptical Western donors and foreign investors.
Mugabe’s regime, however, has reneged on an agreement to release dozens of opposition activists, who have been abducted and severely tortured to extract false confessions of terrorism.
Doctors’ affidavits seen by and reported in the Guardian newspaper showed a pattern of torture of many of the 30 political and human rights activists held by the state for months. Nine of the prisoners seen by doctors were subjected to simulated drowning, being hung by their wrists in handcuffs and beaten, and high-voltage electric shocks.
One man was hung upside down from a tree and dumped into a water-filled drum until he passed out. A 72-year-old man was held in a deep freeze before scalding water was poured on his genitals.
Human rights lawyers say the detainees have been tortured to force them to falsely confess to bomb attacks on police stations or plots to overthrow Mugabe, in an attempt by his regime to justify further state violence against the MDC.
Tsvangirai has demanded the release of the detainees, who include his own security chief and a former close aide, as a condition for being sworn in as prime minister.
A deal had been reached between the MDC and Nicholas Goche, a senior negotiator in Mugabe’s party, for 16 detainees to be released.
Some were to be taken to hospital on Friday and then quietly freed by a judge in order for the regime to save face. Eight were to appear in court yesterday on the understanding they would be freed. But none of the detainees was produced after the prisons commissioner, Major-General Paradzai Zimondi, refused to hand them over.
Zimondi is a hardline member of the Joint Operations Command (JOC), which acts as Mugabe’s security Cabinet. JOC organized the campaign of terror, beatings and killings against MDC supporters during last year’s elections. The general has threatened violence against the opposition and recently he burst into a court and broke up a hearing on the release of some of the detainees.
The MDC is interpreting Zimondi’s intervention as evidence that the JOC intends to subvert the power-sharing administration by continuing the violence and intimidation against Tsvangirai’s officials and supporters.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to