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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS