African politics is a joke!

Is it any wonder that people regard the whole thing as a joke ?

Power summit cancelled after Morgan Tsvangirai is denied passport

The Times

Negotiations to save Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deal descended into farce yesterday when the party of the Prime Minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai boycotted a regional summit aimed at saving last month’s “historic” deal after its leader was denied a passport.

President Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party dismissed the move by its supposed coalition partner as a gimmick. Mr Tsvangirai, who has been waiting for a new passport for five months, was instead issued with an emergency travel document to go to Swaziland.

Senior officials in his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) called this an insult. “The issue of a passport is a mere symptom,” said Tendai Biti, the MDC secretary-general. “The real problem [is] there is no readiness on the part of Zanu (PF) to engage in a cooperative government with Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC. They are keeping him imprisoned within the borders of the country,” he said.

The summit was postponed until next week. The MDC said, however, that the proposed meeting, held under the auspices of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), was “too narrow” to make Mr Mugabe see sense. It called for a full summit of the 12-member organisation rather than the troika of Angola, Botswana and Swaziland which monitors the accord.

The summit host, King Mswati of Swaziland, the world’s last absolute monarch who is much criticised for his own lack of democratic credentials, sent his private jet to Harare to fetch Mr Tsvangirai but the latter declined to board without his passport.

The MDC and the Zanu (PF) have been disputing the sharing-out of ministries since the accord was signed.