ZIMBABWE’S two-year-old coalition government involving the country’s main political parties has failed to halt human rights abuses and political violence, one of the main goals of the powersharing deal, Amnesty International has said.
The international rights organisation said in a new report that the violence was mainly perpetrated by supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and that it continued with the “tacit approval” of the security forces.
Amnesty’s director for Africa, Erwin van der Borght, said the formation of the coalition had raised hopes among Zimbabweans that human rights abuses, which characterised the last decade, were coming to an end. But two years on, these hopes were “rapidly fading away and have been replaced by fear and instability amid talk of another election”.
The report’s release coincides with a rising suspicion among political analysts and member of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party that Zanu-PF is hellbent on holding a general election within the next six months.
In the final six month of last year, when the coalition partners’ inability to work together became increasingly apparent, Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party repeatedly called for fresh parliamentary and presidential elections to end the deadlock, despite reservations expressed by many stakeholders that the country is not ready.
According to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) sponsored agreement, a new poll should only take place when all elements of the powersharing deal are implemented in full.
Many of the reforms contained in the deal are designed to level the political playing field – such as ensuring press freedoms, revamping electoral law and writing a new constitution – so when fresh elections take place they have a good chance of being declared free and fair.
It has been reported that South African president Jacob Zuma, the mediator SADC appointed to oversee the implementation of the Zimbabwean agreement, visited in December to tell Mr Mugabe the country was not ready for a new poll.
Since then reports of widespread attacks on MDC supporters by their Zanu-PF counterparts in urban and rural areas have surfaced with increasing frequency.