I would like to ask, who is in charge of Zimbabwe, the Government of Zimbabwe or Lindiwe Zulu? If it is the former then I would like to further ask what business that later has deciding when or when not elections would be held in Zimbabwe.
Secondly who are the parties to the dispute in Zimbabwe. Are Jacob Zuma or Lindiwe Zulu in any way parties to the dispute. If that is the case can they please explain to us how that come about and why they are mediators at the same time. As far as I am concerned announcements of what can or cannot happen should be coming from Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai, Welshman Ncube (or is it Arthur Mutambara?).
It is entirely up to the three parties to the dispute to modify agreements they made in the past. What is not normal is for the mediator to try and stand in the way of any such modifications to past agreements. What is not normal is for the mediator to try and feed negotiating positions to some of the parties or adopt the positions of some of the parties and impose them on others. It is not up to Lindiwe Zulu to dictate to the parties. It is not up to Lindiwe Zulu decide when elections can or cannot be held in Zimbabwe.
As far as I am aware both Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe have hinted that the elections can be held without all the conditions of the GPA being met or even a new constitution, especially if the 5-year election cycle is about to pass. That cycle is less than a year away so Lindiwe Zulu had better stop grand-standing about things she knows little about. While it is expected for parties to a dispute to grandstand it is completely unusually for a so called mediator to become the chief grandstander.
Despite what the Lindiwe Zulus like to fabricate and believe, Zimbabwe has dilligently, without fail, held multi-party parliamentary elections every five years since her 1980 independence which makes her the leading democracy in Africa. Presidential elections have been held every 6 years since the post was created. So far nothing has ever made Zimbabwe miss her democratic heartbeat, and I am sure nothing, not even Lindiwe Zulu, is going delay elections beyond March 2013.
The overwhelming popularity of Zanu-PF should not be percieved as lack of democracy in much the same way the overwhelming popularity of the ANC in South Africa for the past 20 years does not signal a lack of democracy in South Africa.
It is the involvement of the Lindiwe Zulus which is about to make Zimbabwe miss her democratic heartbeat.
We should avoid a situation where an otherwise stabilised situation is inflamed again by poor or non-existant mediation skills. The only way that can be achieved is to remove the poor mediators.
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