Pahad says elections 'last chance to save Zimbabwe'

Pahad says elections 'last chance to save Zimbabwe'

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SOUTH Africa's Foreign Affairs Minister, Aziz Pahad, says the forthcoming Zimbabwe general elections could be the last opportunity for Zimbabweans to save their country.

Pahad says everything possible must be done to ensure free and fair elections.

Hre said: "I believe the Zimbabweans now have the opportunity to save their country. I believe it is a very crucial moment, a decisive moment for the Zimbabwean people.

"It is a decisive moment for the economic situation and for stability in the whole region. We must all do everything that we can to ensure that the elections are free and fair."

Meanwhile, Zimbabwean opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, says it will be impossible to have free and fair elections next month.

He has reacted after Zimbabwe's Former Finance Minister, Simba Makoni, reiterated that he would contest next month's election as an independent candidate.

"We have always emphasised that the forthcoming election cannot be free and fair, that is why the SADC initiative was a ray of hope for creating those conditions. Unfortunately this has not come to pass so the same conditions of Mugabe running the election according to his rules will apply."

Tsvangirai also says that President Thabo Mbeki's mediation efforts in Zimbabwe have completely failed, although Pahad disputes this.

Pahad told a media briefing at Parliament that all five substantive issues at the heart of the mediation process have been accepted by all parties.

"It will be good to ask the question, not to us, but to one of the MDC parties, if the mediation has failed. He (Tsvangirai) will have to explain to SADC and everybody what he means by 'the mediation has failed'... All the parties are now... preparing for elections... If the mediation has failed, it is difficult for me to understand why everybody is preparing for elections," said Pahad.
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