Zanu PF, MDC Formations Agree on Election Road Map

SW Radio Africa (London)

Tichaona Sibanda

26 April 2011

Party negotiators to the Global Political Agreement (GPA) have agreed on an election road map, but are still deadlocked over security sector reform and staffing in the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).

These two critical issues will now be dealt with by the SADC regional mediator President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. Analysts believe the weekend breakthrough on the road map, which included reforms to the media, will pave the way for free and fair elections after the drafting of a new constitution.

A highly placed source in Harare told SW Radio Africa on Tuesday that issues to do with recruitment of staff for the ZEC and the role of security forces in politics and elections, will now be looked at by Zuma and the principals to the GPA.

The two MDC formations in the unity government allege that most ZEC staff are either current or former security personnel, drawn mostly from the Zimbabwe National Army and Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO).

The two parties also want an end to state sponsored abuse of the rule of law and are demanding that violence waged by the military, police, war vets and militia be stopped.

However, ZANU PF is insisting that it has no knowledge of any abuses or state sponsored violence.

One of the party negotiators told SW Radio Africa they will be flying to South Africa in early May to work on the implementation of the GPA, with assistance from Zuma’s facilitation team.

“We have literally agreed on the issue of constitution-making processes, media reforms, electoral reforms, restoration of the rule of law, freedom of association and of assembly and the actual election process,” the negotiator said.

The negotiator, who asked to remain anonymous continued: “On media reforms, we have agreed on steps to be taken to ensure a new Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) board is re-constituted. What we are actually going to be doing in South Africa is work out when the new board will be reconstituted after which, they will start calling for radio and television applications.”

The negotiator added: “Remember we are working on a new strict Troika timeline because all what we are working on now will be tabled before a full SADC summit on 20th May.”

A new BAZ board will replace the one announced by the government in 2009, headed by former Media Information Commission (MIC) chairman, Tafataona Mahoso.

The unilateral appointment of that board by ZANU PF caused a furore after the MDC-T alleged that the appointment of the board members was a GPA issue, which needed the input of all the three principals to the GPA. The BAZ board that was appointed in 2009 contained pro-ZANU PF members only.

Recently Robert Mugabe’s spokesman, George Charamba said Zimbabwe cannot licence new radio stations because it does not have the transmission infrastructure needed to host new frequencies for any other broadcaster besides the existing ZBC services.

But an assessment carried out two years ago by the Ministry of Information and Publicity showed that there was room for 31 radio licences in urban areas and 60 country-based licences. There was also the capacity for an additional two FM stations, the study found out.

There are no independent broadcasters in Zimbabwe and the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) runs the country’s television and radio stations, all tightly controlled by Mugabe’s ZANU PF.

Although new newspapers have been granted licences, there is an urgent need for independent broadcasters, including community radio stations. Analysts say it is radio that has the capacity to provide information across the country, whereas the uptake of newspapers is often limited, due to cost. Sceptics of the GPA say that a ZANU PF controlled government would never liberalise the airwaves to any extent.

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