MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai met his political rival President Robert Mugabe face to face for the first time in three years this week and bluntly told southern African heads of state to immediately ensure that Mugabe halts government-sponsored violence if free and fair presidential elections are to be held.

Tsvangirai laid down what amounted to minimum conditions that must be met for a free and fair ballot to the leaders of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), who met in Harare this week to discuss Zimbabwe’s political and economic meltdown. “We put our position across on all the problems Zimbabwe is facing as a country and, more importantly, we told the SADC leaders the minimum conditions which we want them to ensure are met for a free and fair presidential poll to be held,” he told the Financial Gazette.

Tsvangirai, head of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), spoke after meeting the SADC leaders of Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe on Tuesday. Apart from calling for an end to state-led violence, he demanded the setting up of an Independent Electoral Commission to conduct and supervise the presidential poll, an immediate deployment of international observers and that opposition parties be given equal access to the public media.

Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwean national elections have been run by the Electoral Supervisory Commission, which is staffed solely by individuals appointed by Mugabe. The government has turned the public media into a propaganda tool for the ruling Zanu PF party while blacking out opposition parties.

Tsvangirai described the meeting at which he met Mugabe for the first time in three years as tense but frank and fruitful. The MDC leader last met Mugabe in 1988 when the former was leader of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) which had just successfully masterminded a nationwide job stayaway in protest against the government’s economic policies.

During Tuesday’s meeting in Harare, Mugabe who sat alongside other SADC heads of state, did not pose or answer any issue raised during Tsvangirai’s presentation which lasted almost two hours. Conference sources said Mugabe kept mum, only making inaudible interjections and getting briefings from Vice President Joseph Msika, Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo, Agriculture Minister Joseph Made and Home Affairs Minister John Nkomo. Nkomo, who is also Zanu PF’s national chairman, instead answered issues raised by the MDC leadership on the breakdown of the rule of law in Zimbabwe, the economy, the land, political violence and the conduct of the war veterans. During the meeting, Nkomo accused Tsvangirai of ruining the economy by calling for job stayaways during his stint at the ZCTU.

Tsvangirai said his party’s message was well received by the SADC leaders and that his team had changed their perceptions on Zimbabwe, where the government insists law and order have not broken down. He said he told the SADC summit it was important that Mugabe appreciates that the MDC is a legitimate opposition party in the country which could not be wished away.

He stressed that Mugabe ought to come to terms with the fact that Zimbabwe’s one-party rule was over if problems affecting the country were to be resolved through a national consensus. Tsvangirai told the SADC leaders that he had written to Mugabe twice in the past two years suggesting that their two parties meet to find a common ground to resolve the country’s problems but no response had been forthcoming. He said it was a shame that he and Mugabe, as leaders of the major political parties in Zimbabwe, had to meet only at a meeting organised by outsiders.

SADC chairman Bakili Muluzi urged inter-party dialogue and an end to political violence and intimidation if democracy was to work in Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai said he told the SADC leaders that Zimbabwe’s problems centred on crisis governance and that everyone in the country agreed on the need for land reform but differed on methods that had to be used.

Zimbabwe has been in crisis since February 2000 when mobs of Zanu PF supporters who call themselves war veterans seized hundreds of commercial farms across the country, already grappling with a recession. Their action, later expanded to include raids on companies, drove away virtually all investment at a time when many companies were already closing because of the poor economic climate, accentuating record unemployment of 60 percent.