*Leaders Sign Historic Unity Pact*

allAfrica.com

NEWS
15 September 2008
Posted to the web 15 September 2008

By John Allen
Cape Town

Zimbabwe's three principal political leaders signed a power-sharing
agreement in Harare on Monday, bringing to an end nearly 30 years of
exclusive rule by the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front
(Zanu-PF).

At a ceremony presided over by leaders of the Southern African Development
Community (SADC), a packed ballroom in the Rainbow Towers hotel erupted in
cheers and whistles as the SADC chair and facilitator of the power-sharing
talks, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, announced Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai as "the Prime Minister of
the Republic of Zimbabwe."

As the leaders signed copies of the agreement, a praise-singer cried out:
"Halala, Africa!" (Congratulations, Africa). "Africa you are able! Africa
you can do it! Africa you can show it... Mama Africa, today we see your
rebirth!"

The ceremony was broadcast live in Zimbabwe and neighbouring South Africa.

When Tsvangirai, President Robert Mugabe and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur
Mutambara exchanged signed documents, Mbeki brought them together and
encouraged them jointly to shake hands.

Addressing the signing ceremony from a prepared text, Tsvangirai said the
"new, inclusive" government's top priority would be getting food to
Zimbabwe's people.

The parties should not be driven by "past wrongs," he said, but instead
needed to build on the "painful compromises" they had made. No party on its
own could provide solutions to the country's problems, he added.

Tsvangirai proclaimed the MDC's mandate to change the country's policies and
style of government, but also invoked the spirit of reconciliation expressed
by Mugabe at the end of the country's liberation war, quoting what he called
Mugabe's "wise words" in 1980: "Let us turn our swords into ploughshares. If
you were my enemy yesterday, today we are bound by the same patriotic duty
and destiny."

In a longer speech, delivered off-the-cuff, Mugabe praised SADC leaders -
Mbeki in particular - for supporting the power-sharing talks which had
produced the agreement and blamed Britain for the country's problems.

He portrayed the ceremony as a "re-enactment... of that togetherness, the
partnership, the cooperation" which had brought independence from white rule
to the region. Now southern Africa's leaders had again come to help
Zimbabwe.

"I don't see any British among them, I don't see any Americans among them...
Africa's problems must be solved by Africans...

"The problem that we had is the problem that was created by the former
colonial power wanting to interfere in our domestic affairs and wanting to
have a share in our natural resources."

Mugabe defended Mbeki's "objectivity" in the talks: "There are lots of
things in the agreement I did not like and still do not like." But "history
makes us walk the same route - we may disagree on that route... but there
are areas where we now agree..."

The ceremony took on the nature of a parliamentary debate as Mugabe turned
to the positions of the MDC.

Calls of dissent arose as Mugabe said democracy in Africa was "a difficult
proposition... because always the opposition will want much more than it
deserves, the opposition will want to be the ruling party, and it will
devise ways and means of getting there, including violence."

Responding to shouted interjections, Mugabe said he was not referring only
to the MDC: "That is how it is in Africa... So it will take us some time to
get to a position where opposition parties will confine themselves to
peaceful ways of opposing..."

However, he ended his address by welcoming Tsvangirai's reference to his
1980 remarks: "Now we can't avoid each other, I said, because we are moving
towards the same destiny. We share the same destiny, and now the time has
come to recognise that we belong together..."

King Mswati III of Swaziland, who chairs the SADC "Organ on Politics,
Defence and Security Cooperation," and President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania,
chair of the African Union, joined Mbeki in presiding over the signing.

Mswati called on the international community to lift sanctions against
Zimbabwe, and Kikwete voiced the question in the minds of many onlookers
when he asked: "Will it [the agreement] fall apart or will it hold?" He
believed it would hold, he said: "You have proved the doubting Thomases...
and your detractors... wrong."

Presidents Ian Khama of Botswana, Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic
of Congo, Armando Guebuza of Mozambique and Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia,
acting Zambian President Rupiah Banda and Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili
of Lesotho also attended the ceremony.

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