Plans in Place to Arrest Morgan Tsvangirai?

From The Harare Tribune

Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Zimbabwe's fire breathing, former hero and dictator insists that the opposition will not receiving any further concessions from his party in the ongoing negotiations. He sees negotiations with the oppositions as "eating together with the enemy" and makes no secret of the fact that he hates evrything that the opposition stands for.

Robert Mugabe’s government has put in place an elaborate plan to arrest main opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai if he refuses to join the envisaged inclusive government, security officials have claimed.

The say that Tsvangirai, who returned to Zimbabwe for the first time in two months on Saturday, could be charged with treason if he continues to hold out for a more equitable deal.

Today, the MDC leader will meet Mugabe in a last-ditch effort to save the floundering power-sharing deal, signed between the ruling Zanu-PF and the MDC in September last year. The main stumbling blocks are the allocation of key ministries and continued detention by the Mugabe regime of opposition supporters.

President Kgalema Motlanthe and his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, the Southern African Development Community mediator, are expected to attend the meeting, along with Mozambique’s president, Armando Guebuza.

“If Tsvangirai continues to play hardball he will be linked to ongoing trials of people accused of plotting to overthrow Mugabe,” a security source said.

The source, who is close to the investigation into allegations that arrested Zimbabwe Peace Project director Jestina Mukoko recruited insurgents, said the plan was at an advanced stage. Mukoko is accused of recruiting people for military training in Botswana with a view to pursuing an armed insurgency to remove Mugabe, 84, from power.

The source said that Mukoko’s arrest could have resulted from the fact that she has interviewed hundreds of opposition members who were brutalised by Mugabe’s party before elections last year, and has compiled accounts of their horror.

“There are serious concerns that these documents could end up at the [international criminal court at] The Hague. This could strengthen calls for the leadership of this country to be brought before the international criminal court ” said the source.



Mukoko has denied under oath suggestions that she was a member of the MDC. The allegations are yet to be tested in court.

In addition, last week’s arrest of three white farmers, John Naested, Bryan Baxter and Angus Thompson, on suspicion that they were training MDC youths in the use of firearms, raised fears that the final stages of the claim plot against the opposition were being put into place.