Presidential election due in March

Zimbabwe's long-awaited presidential election is due in March, although the exact dates have not been set, President Robert Mugabe said on Tuesday. The announcement came after Mugabe met with a task force of ministers from the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC), who were in Harare for two days of talks to discuss ways to ease Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis. An election date brings into even sharper focus opposition fears that the presidential poll, in which Mugabe will face his most serious political challenge since independence in 1980, cannot be free and fair in the current political climate. The mission by the six-member SADC ministerial task team - the second in three months - to audit the government's land reform programme and commitments to the rule of law, faced a tough opening speech by Zimbabwe's Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge on Monday. "We are aware of strategic decisions in Brussels to try and conscript other players to turn the entire African continent against us, and the sinister effort to turn our SADC friends against us," Mudenge reportedly said. "We would face anybody, because might is right," he added. His remarks referred to criticism in the last two weeks from South Africa, which appealed to the international community to "act urgently" to ensure free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. Last week the US Congress passed the Zimbabwe Democracy Bill which imposes "smart sanctions" on government officials responsible for "the deliberate breakdown of the rule of law". The European Union has also edged towards sanctions over the government's resistance to effective election monitoring and its human rights record. Lilian Patel, Malawi's foreign minister and chair of the SADC task force said the region was "greatly concerned by what is going on in this country". But she added: "We in SADC would like to make it clear that we do not support sanctions" as they would cause "untold suffering to scores of Zimbabweans, as well as to other people in our region". SADC's apparent unwillingness to act robustly has not come as a surprise, analysts told IRIN. The regional economic grouping has been effectively split since 1998, over the military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by troops from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, according to Moeletsi Mbeki of the South African Institute of International Affairs. Mbeki, who this week warned of civil war in Zimbabwe if the presidential elections are not transparent, told IRIN that with a consensus for action by SADC "totally unrealistic", only South Africa had the clout to act. While Zimbabwe was only a "peripheral issue" for the international community, it had a direct bearing on South Africa's national interests as a neighbour and major trading partner. "Zimbabwe can only be hauled back from the abyss by the actions of South Africa," the region's superpower, Mbeki said. He called for a national policy that involved the government, business and civil society implementing a "much more serious set of initiatives", including the cutting of fuel and electricity supplies - alongside transport links - with landlocked Zimbabwe.