The images of a grinning Robert Mugabe at yesterday's Dar es Salaam summit said it all: the other southern African leaders did not deliver the expected rebuke. All they came up with was that Thabo Mbeke of South Africa should try to mediate some sort of peace between Mugabe and his opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). It's a tall order.
In the 48 hours before Mugabe left for Tanzania, the crackdown on the MDC intensified. The police picked up dozens of party members, including leader Morgan Tszangirai, taken at gunpoint from his HQ.
Another senior MDC member, Last Maengahama, was abducted by gunmen - assumed to be contracted by Mugabe's secret police, the COI - and dumped on farmland outside Harare after being severely beaten.
Ian Makone, a special adviser to Tsvangirai, and national council |
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The failure of the Dar es Salaam summit to deliver a rebuke has emboldened Mugabe |
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member Piniel Denga were among 35 or more MDC supporters arrested after police raided a flat in Harare on Wednesday and seized a hoard of explosives and detonators.
The police claim the explosives are identical to those used in the bombing of a train outside Harare last weekend. They are of American origin and in use by the army.
The MDC claims that the authorities themselves planted the explosives in the flat and were also responsible for the train bombing in a brazen attempt to incriminate the MDC. A police spokesman said documents were found in the flat linking the MDC to a radical group known as the Democratic Resistance Committee.
Now Mugabe is back in Harare, awaiting his call from peacemaker Mbeke. And hoping the US and EU heed the call from yesterday's summit to lift sanctions. No one is holding their breath.
FIRST POSTED MARCH 30, 2007
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