South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki said last week he was confident that the ongoing mediation would produce a solution for Zimbabwe’s political crisis. He made the statement after a meeting with both President Robert Mugabe and opposition officials in Harare, where he had made a brief stopover on his way to the Commonwealth summit in Kampala, Uganda.
Mr. Mbeki, who is helping find a solution to Zimbabwe’s political crisis, is quoted as saying the talks are “going well”. Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai has also said there has been notable progress.
Sydney Masamvu is a Senior Analyst with the International Crisis Group. From Pretoria, South Africa, he told VOA reporter Akwei Thompson that Mr. Mbeki’s statement of conviction is “born out of the realization that he has been actively engaged in this process and also out of the interaction that he has with the opposition and the Zimbabwean government.”
Masamvu added that he believes that Mr. Mbeki’s trip to Zimbabwe “…was actually meant to drive home, if specially to Mugabe, that this time around, he has to deliver his side of the bargain...”