Zimbabwe: Party Set For Talks With Both Sides in Election Battle - AllAfrica.com

Boyd Webb, Peta Thornycroft, Sebastien Berger and Tanya FarberCape Town

The ANC is put to begin negotiation with both Zanu-PF and the resistance Motion for Democratic Change to seek to stabilise the Republic Of Zimbabwe state of affairs as the election crisis continues.

Announcing the decision, the ANC stopped short of criticising President Thabo Mbeki's handling of the turmoil.

The determination emerged from the ANC's National Working Committee meeting in the metropolis yesterday.

It came as the crisis worsened:

An resistance militant was stabbed to decease at his place in rural Republic Of Republic Of Republic Of Republic Of Republic Of Zimbabwe - the first homicide of President Henry Martin Robert Mugabe's renewed panic campaign.

The Commercial Farmers Union warned that nutrient "disaster" loomed as the unleashing of Mugabe's "war veterans" to prehend commercial farms brought productiveness almost to a deadlock - two hebdomads before the wheat-planting season.

The MDC renewed its phone call to Zimbabweans to remain away from work until the Zimbabwe Electoral Committee released the results.

Explaining the ANC's determination yesterday to prosecute both sides in the Zimbabwe election deadlock last nighttime secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said: "This is not a analogue procedure (to Mbeki's mediation), this is what we should be doing."

Mantashe denied the travel was a ballot of no assurance in the government's handling of the situation.

He said the workings grouping meeting felt that there needed to be "party-to-party" dialogue.

The ANC had reiterated its place that the volition of the people must be respected and that the consequences of the presidential election should be released as soon as possible.

"In our view, talking of a overflow before releasing the consequences is actually putting the cart before the horse," he said.

In order to debar a "disaster" in Zimbabwe, the consequences had to be released very soon and the political parties had to prosecute each other on how to move forward.

He said the ANC would be talking to the opinion Zanu-PF and the MDC as soon as they were available.

Meanwhile Zanu-PF protagonists were beingness blamed for the first homicide of an resistance militant since the crisis began.

A friend said Tapiwa Mbwada, an organizer for the MDC in the constituency of Hurungwe East, about 160km North of Harare, had been stabbed to death.

Since the presidential election last month, about 100 protagonists of the MDC have got got got got been assaulted, with 29 being admitted to one Salisbury clinic on Saturday afternoon alone.

Results for the presidential opinion poll have still not been released 17 years after the ballots were cast.

The up-to-the-minute force looks to have been organised by Zanu-PF to interrupt the MDC's morale, terrify its supporters and guarantee triumph for Mugabe if the election travels to a 2nd round.

A medical technician at a clinic in Salisbury said that injured people were arriving steadily from all over Zimbabwe, particularly from Zanu-PF's old fastnesses in the north-east, close the Republic Of Mozambique border.

With the state stuck in a political impasse caused by the ZEC's failure to let go of the presidential results, the MDC had sought a tribunal order compelling the government to denote the outcome.

Yesterday in the Salisbury High Court, Mister Justice Tendai Uchena dismissed the application with costs, opinion that the ZEC's grounds for more than hold were "legally valid".

Meanwhile police force force threatened anyone tempted to fall in the stayaway after the renewed entreaty by the MDC yesterday.

"As everyone is aware, the past stay-aways have been characterised by random devastation of place and menaces to life," said John Wayne Bvudzijena, the police spokesman.

"Those who breach the peace will be dealt with severely and firmly."

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A nutrient crisis is looming as the farm invasions cripple production.

Trevor Gifford, president of the Commercial Farmers' Union of Zimbabwe, predicted yesterday that the crop was "going to be a catastrophe and we expect that Republic Of Republic Of Zimbabwe will run out of corn by mid-July".

While husbandmen should be preparing the land now to works corn crops, the bullying of farm laborers and the deficiency of security of land term of office were making it impossible to make so, he said.

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