'Leadership must be more mature' - Khaya Moyo on Tsvangirai

The state media reports that Zanu-PF national chairperson Simon Khaya Moyo has taken a swipe at MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai for rushing to involve other countries whenever there are some disagreements among the parties in the inclusive Government.

He said it was important for Tsvangirai, who is also Prime Minister, to understand that Zimbabwe was a sovereign state that was not run by other countries.

Khaya Moyo made the remarks to Norway's Ambassador to Zimbabwe Ms Ingebjorg Stofring when she paid a courtesy call on him yesterday.

This follows Tsvangirai's whirlwind tour of the Sadc region to plead with leaders for them to push for delayed elections in Zimbabwe after realising that his support was dwindling.

"Leadership must be more mature than that. If there is any problem within ourselves, surely we sit down amongst ourselves and look at it and sort it out.

"We don't get into aircraft and rush to Europe, rush to Sadc. It won't help that particular person.

"Let us show leadership by knowing that we are a sovereign state. If there is anything then ourselves we do meet.

"The President and the other principals meet every Monday so if there is any problem why not just meet on Mondays and address it than to get into a plane and say 'I will be in London tomorrow, I will be in Washington next week because somebody collapsed somewhere?' . . . we can't run a country like that. We become a laughing stock," said Khaya Moyo.

He also defended Government's decision to cancel its request for electoral financial assistance from the United Nations, saying the world body's conditionalities for assistance were "unheard of".

Khaya Moyo, who is a career diplomat, said imposing terms of reference on a sovereign state was an insult.

Norway is one of the countries that give financial support through the UN.

"You cannot give support because you have put down conditionalities. I don't think that is proper.

"We are a sovereign state . . . You cannot say you want to do some fact-finding before you give us aid.

"The point is we have an electoral body headed by a judge with a full team and they know what requirements they need to conduct elections.

"Surely you cannot tell them that 'look, we don't take what you are telling us   . . . we are coming ourselves to fact-find'. That is unheard of. That is an insult," said Khaya Moyo.

He said if the UN wanted to assist they were supposed to be guided by what ZEC requested than setting conditions.

Khaya Moyo said it was regrettable that Norway and some European Union countries had been hoodwinked by Britain to impose the illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe over a bilateral dispute between London and Harare.

The Zimbabwean Government, he said, was surprised to see Norway imposing the illegal embargo on Zimbabwe despite good relations that existed between the two countries since the liberation struggle.

He said Zimbabwe appreciated the re-engagement efforts by the EU but insisted that the bloc should treat Zimbabwe as a sovereign state for relations to normalise.

Khaya Moyo said partial removal of sanctions on some Zanu-PF officials and companies but retaining them on President Mugabe was meaningless.

"They have of course of late started removing some of us from their list and I must say to be frank to us that is totally meaningless.

"What is illegal is illegal, it cannot be halved and then become legal. So we have said they can forget about those measures they are taking.

"Of course as you know, our President still remains under these sanctions. To us as a party Zanu-PF and indeed as Government, once our President is under sanctions we are all under sanctions.

"We don't accept that at all and we hope they can remove whatever sanctions remain unconditionally so that we can open a new page and go back to the days when we had normal relations and go on with the business of promoting our economies and trade relations as well," said Khaya Moyo.

Khaya Moyo said Zimbabwe was going to have peaceful elections because the leadership had been calling for peace and tolerance.

He slammed MDC formation for pointing fingers at Zanu-PF whenever there was death or violence.

Ambassador Stofring said the pre-conditions for poll assistance by the UN were the standard world over.

"To my understanding, that is the standard procedure.

"I thought there was a dialogue between Zimbabwe and the UN regarding this . . . I think this is just universal," said Ambassador Stofring.

Government cancelled the request for poll funding after the UN team overstepped its mandate, demanding to meet entities and civil society organisations with nothing to do with elections.

The NGOs the team sought to meet included the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, Nango, Women's Coalition, academia representatives and an umbrella association of journalists, some of whom have been hostile to the Government.

Ambassador Stofring said her country would want to see Zimbabwe hold peaceful elections, adding that they would respect anyone who wins the forthcoming polls.