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Published 24th January 2003

Vol 44 No 2


Zimbabwe

Coming out of the closet

The first plan may have failed but finding an exit route for Comrade Mugabe is now political centre stage

The architects of the soft-landing plan for President Robert Gabriel Mugabe are frustrated (AC Vol 44 No 1). Their efforts have produced the opposite effect to that intended: Mugabe is now less inclined to negotiate a retirement than he was six months ago. Not only have Colonel Lionel Dyck and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai exposed the scheme, the public naming of parliamentary Speaker Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa and the Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, General Vitalis Gava Zvinavashe (AC Vol 43 No 23), as its authors has made them targets of Mugabe's considerable wrath. Enraged that he wasn't informed about the advanced state of the negotiations several meetings with South African President Thabo Mbeki and intermediaries in Britain Mugabe has interpreted Mnangagwa's and Zvinavashe's scheme as tantamount to treason. Mugabe's attack-dog, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, told the state-owned daily, The Herald that the Mnangagwa plan amounted to a coup d'état.


On the mend

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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Constitutional and economic reform top the new government's priority list

Optimists have suggested that Kenya's wheelchair-bound President Mwai Kibaki is a metaphor for the national condition: physically constrained but spiritually indomitable or in Kenya's new political parlance, 'unbwogable'....


Foul play

Delegates talk peace in Paris but back home the killings continue and divisions deepen

Major changes to laws on eligibility to hold political office and to own land have been outlined by Côte d'Ivoire's political parties and rebel movements meeting in France...


Fradique's new front

A newcomer to oil finds that old deals with foreign friends gum up the works

The standoff between President Fradique de Menezes and oil interests in Nigeria, Norway and the United States blocks development of São Tomé e Príncipe's offshore zone, which may...


Gatsha bites back

Inkatha has stopped the ANC's efforts to change the election rules

Inkatha, the only party strong enough to face up to the governing African National Congress, won a tactical victory this month in its home province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN)....



Pointers

Coordinates

While obstructing the Machakos talks by refusing to discuss the north-south buffer zone and other key issues, the National Islamic Front (National Congress) government is boosting its military...


Cable controversy

The worsening fighting in the Ituri region of eastern Congo-Kinshasa is undermining the peace accords signed by Rwanda and Uganda with the Kinshasa government, according to diplomatic cables...


Rallying round

Sindiély Wade, daughter of President Abdoulaye Wade, chose to compete in the Paris-Dakar rally the one year the rally came nowhere near the Senegalese capital. Part of Nissan's...