MDC-T leaders meet SADC team, declare deadlock on draft Constitution

The Movement for Domocratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai leadership today met with South African President Jacob Zuma's facilitation team in Harare and informed them that a deadlock had been created because of Zanu-PF attempts to illegally rewrite the draft Constitution.

The MDC team comprised of the Deputy Treasurer, Elton Mangoma and Spokesperson, Douglas Mwonzora.

Mwonzora was standing in for Tendai Biti who is away on official business.

Speaking after the meeting, Mwonzora said the MDC was satisfied with the outcome of the meeting despite Zanu-PF's insincerity on the new Constitution. He said the party and the people of Zimbabwe remained indebted to the people of South Africa for always finding time to resolve the country's issues.

He said three major issues were on the agenda of today's meeting, which was a follow up of the resolutions of the Maputo SADC summit held two weeks ago. "On the Constitution, the MDC took up the opportunity to advise the facilitators that Zanu-PF's antics to delay the referendum were not acceptable," said Mwonzora.

He said Zanu-PF had made a total of 266 changes to the Copac draft. "The MDC reiterated that the draft Constitution was a product of two key processes in which Zanu-PF participated in. That is the outreach and negotiation processes. Importantly, in terms of the Article 6 of the Global Political Agreement, it is noted that the Copac draft must be referred to the Second All Stakeholders Conference enroute to the referendum," said Mwonzora.

He added that the issue of SADC representatives coming to Zimbabwe to assist the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (Jomic) was resolved and the representatives will be commencing their duties without any delays.

This was a resolution made at the SADC Troika meeting held in Livingstone, Zambia last year.

The other issue on the agenda today was the implementation mechanisms on all agreed issues by the negotiators. "It is the worry of SADC that there are a lot of things that have been agreed on but however they have not been implemented. It was therefore agreed that an implementation process be put in place for the issues that have been agreed on," said Mwonzora.

Some of the issues that have been agreed on but not implemented are; media reforms, an end to violence and the selective application of the law among other issues.