Details of Zimbabwe deal emerge

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is to retain control of the army and chair cabinet meetings, according to leaks of Thursday's power-sharing deal.

Mr Coltart said that Mr Mugabe would have “greatly reduced powers to those he enjoys today”. There would also be two largely ceremonial vice-presidents from Mr Mugabe’s Zanu (PF).
As prime minister, Mr Tsvangirai “does not have absolute power but he does have substantial power”, Mr Coltart, who was present at the launch of the MDC nine years ago, said.
Mr Tsvangirai is to advise Mr Mugabe on all future appointments such as judges and ambassadors, though whether he will be able to compel the president to heed his advice is uncertain.
Underneath Mr Tsvangirai will be two deputy prime ministers, one from MDC-T, Mr Tsvangirai’s faction, and one from MDC-M, a rival faction headed by Arthur Mutambara.
Mr Coltart admitted the arrangement for conducting government business – at the heart of the impasse of the last weeks’ negotiations - was “slightly cumbersome”. Mr Mugabe is to chair the Cabinet, while Mr Tsvangirai will be the vice-chair. The Cabinet will largely reflect the votes cast for the various parties in the March election – in which Zanu PF claims it got the most votes, if not the most parliamentary seats.
Zanu PF will have 15 seats while MDC-T will have 13 and MDC-M three.
“If the two MDC factions work together, which they must in the national interest, they will enjoy a majority in Cabinet,” said Mr Coltart, who is a senator for Mr Mutambara’s faction.
The work of the Cabinet will be overseen by a council of ministers headed by Mr Tsvangirai. A source close to the talks quoted by Agence France-Presse said that all decisions woul
d be made by the council, though it would have to report back to Mr Mugabe.

“Power will be shared, no one will get more power than the other party, even (in) the hiring and firing of cabinet members,” the source explained.
Western powers reacted to news of the deal with caution. The European Commission said it welcomed “this significant step forward“ but said it would have to wait until full details of the agreement were unveiled.
“At this stage we are cautiously optimistic,” said John Clancy, commission spokesman on humanitarian aid and development issues.
The European Union said it was reconsidering its plans to extend its sanctions against Zimbabwe, following the Harare deal, according to the French EU presidency.

But a presidency official said the deal did not exonerate those guilty of committing pre-election violence. The MDC and human rights groups have accused Mr Mugabe’s militias of a brutal campaign of intimidation ahead of the presidential run-off vote.
“They are not going to escape responsibility,” the official said. “You need to bear that in mind as well.”
Within Zimbabwe, there was some scepticism as to how much control Mr Mugabe would really relinquish.
Lovemore Madhuku, head of the National Constitutional Assembly Pressure Group, said the deal was “more of a capitulation by the MDC”, which was coming in as a “junior partner”. Mr Tsvangirai would only have “some cosmetic executive authority”, he speculated.
John Makumbe, a political analyst and critic of Mr Mugabe, said: “The deal will hold depending on who will have control of the cohesive machinery of the state. If these are still in Mugabe’s hands the deal will unravel and we will soon be back to the negotiating table.”
Yesterday, analysts said that machinery was still firmly under Mr Mugabe's control. “The infrastructure for state-sponsored violence is still in place”, said Martin Rupiyah, director of African research at Cranfield University.
Mr Coltart, the senator from Bulawayo, acknowledged the “long and treacherous road” ahead, saying that the grave humanitarian and economic crises facing Zimbabwe were enough to test even a united government.
Zimbabwe’s economy has imploded over the past decade with inflation soaring to its current rate of 11.2 million per cent. A third of the country’s 12 million citizens have fled and those who remain face chronic food shortages and health problems. Infrastructure has all but collapsed, Aids is rampant and life expectancy is now the world’s lowest.
Mr Coltart said: “The new Cabinet that will have to address these challenges is composed of protagonists – virtually all of the Cabinet Ministers to be appointed by the MDC T and M have at some stage in the last 9 years been brutalized on the instructions of those they will now have to work with.
“Zimbabwe remains highly polarised and it will take statesmanship on all sides to make this work.”