South African churches urge political parties to talk

The SA Council of Churches (SACC) has urged Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to join a forum for dialogue, a senior SACC official told IRIN on Wednesday. "The forum, which will be quite similar to the South African CODESA [Convention for a Democratic South Africa] talks, has been proposed by the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), which has asked us for our support," SACC secretary-general Molefe Tsele said. The 1991 CODESA talks, in which all South African political and civil society organisations participated, led to the creation of an interim constitution and South Africa's first non-racial elections in 1994. Speaking after the conclusion of the SACC's triennial conference in Johannesburg, which debated the situation in Zimbabwe, Tsele said the ZCC was in talks with both the MDC and ZANU-PF to participate in the forum. "Quiet diplomacy and other interventions have been ineffective - we see encouraging dialogue between the parties as the most affective way." Three Zimbabwean bishops - Anglican Bishop Sebastian Bakare, head of the Protestant Zimbabwe Council of Churches, Bishop Trevor Manhanga, president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, and Bishop Patrick Mutume of the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference - have been attempting to hold talks with the two parties since last year. Tsele said the ZCC hoped to extend the team of bishops to eventually include other members of civil society. At the end of its conference the SACC called for the "unhindered participation of local and international observers at [Zimbabwe's] next elections", and passed a resolution denouncing the "erosion of human rights", the "dislocation" of many Zimbabweans, the decline of the economy and the "destruction of much of the [country's] natural heritage".