| MANILA– The political crisis in Zimbabwe has lasted far too long and President Robert Mugabe must resolve the power-sharing impasse, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday.
Also Wednesday, a prominent Zimbabwean women’s activist group said its jailed leaders will join a nationwide prayer vigil for an end to the crisis.
The U.N. chief has been discussing Zimbabwe’s crisis with other leaders and dispatched his senior adviser to Harare. On Wednesday he told reporters in the Philippines that the crisis “has been taking too long.”
“I sincerely hope that President Mugabe will no longer disappoint the international community,” Ban said. “He should meet the expectations of the international community.”
Zimbabweans themselves were showing increasing impatience — and willingness to say so despite the Mugabe regime’s record of cracking down violently on dissent. They want their leaders to come to a political agreement and turn their attention to the economic crisis. Zimbabweans face the world’s highest official inflation rate, and the U.N. predicts half of them will need food aid by next year.
Ban said he hoped a planned regional summit could break the impasse over the allocation of Cabinet posts among Mugabe’s party, Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change and a smaller opposition group.
Tsvangirai accuses Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, of trying to hold on to too many of the most powerful posts, despite agreeing Sept. 15 to share power.
Meanwhile, women of Zimbabwe Arise said its members across the country would pray Wednesday evening “for a speedy resolution to the crisis in Zimbabwe and for change for the better in the justice system in Zimbabwe, within both the courts and the prisons.”
The group said its leaders Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu would be praying in the notorious Mlondolozi Prison in southern Zimbabwe where they have been jailed since holding a peaceful protest Oct. 16.
Other protesters calling on politicians to resolve their power-sharing impasse were arrested and assaulted earlier this week.
Human Rights Watch, in a statement Tuesday, called on Zimbabwean authorities to immediately release Williams and Mahlangu and all
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