South African President Jacob Zuma, mediator in Zimbabwe for the Southern African Development Community, wants to recruit high-profile regional experts who can make a difference at a delicate stage in the Zimbabwe power-sharing crisis, an aide said.
Zuma foreign policy adviser Lindiwe Zulu says the South African president has given his fellow SADC troika members and the SADC secretariat terms of reference for three supplementary members of his Zimbabwe facilitation team.
According to Zulu, Mr. Zuma wants people who are “influential, have clout and understand Zimbabwe’s politics." Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Regional Coordinator Dewa Mavhinga said Mr. Zuma is right to seek top trouble-shooters for his team.
Meanwhile, the political temperature has been rising in Harare. ZANU-PF hardliners led by Jonathan Moyo, a former information minister, are militating for the arrest of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and senior aide Jameson Timba.
The ZANU-PF hardliners say the prime minister undermined President Robert Mugabe’s authority in comments he made to an MDC rally in Gweru, Midlands, this weekend.
Mr. Tsvangirai is said to have accused Mr. Mugabe of lying about the discussions in the just-ended SADC summit in Johannesburg. Moyo told state media that, "I strongly believe that it is high time that the law should take its course, it is totally unacceptable for Tsvangirai and Jameson Timba to call Mr Mugabe a liar."
Moyo did not immediately respond to phone calls. MDC spokesman Douglas Mwonzora dismissed the notion of arresting the prime minister for political comments.
Elsewhere, the parliamentary select committee on constitutional revision has ended the participation in the process of Brigadier-General Douglas Nyikayaramba and other army and security personnel in line with a 2009 resolution excluding such individuals, as VOA Studio 7 correspondent Irwin Chifera reported from Harare.
Meanwhile, following the sudden death of Mufandaedza Hove, a member of the national executive of Prime Minister Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change formation, the executive has been called into extraordinary session to discuss honors for Hove. VOA Studio 7 correspondent Thomas Chiripasi reported on the party reaction.