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Sunday, December 23, 2001 - Web posted at 7:13:15 pm GMT

Heads of state of the Southern African Development Community are to hold an emergency summit early next month to consider a telling official report on the worsening turmoil in Zimbabwe.

The SADC presidents will meet in Blantyre to consider the report by the SADC Ministerial Action Group that visited Harare last week.

The ministers, including South Africa's Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana, are drawing up the document spelling out their assessment of the situation following a "thorough grilling" of Zimbabwean government representatives, farmers and the police.

Mdladlana said this week a joint communique issued after the visit, stating that the SADC ministers "welcomed the improved atmosphere of calm and stability", was not a "completely accurate" reflection of what had transpired in Harare.

"It was a carefully crafted communique which was along the lines of the statement by the heads of state some time ago [at the SADC summit in Blantyre in August, at which Zimbabwe's land reforms were endorsed but SADC leaders called for dialogue].

"We did not want to depart too much from that line. We are accountable to the heads of state and the report which we will present to them will contain our findings. It is then up to them to announce it," Mdladlana said.

At the Harare meeting, the ministers raised concerns about what would happen "if all else fails in Zimbabwe" and about the possibility of violence spilling over into other countries, Mdladlana said.

But the delegation was "amazed" by the cooperation of the Zimbabwean ministers. " Normally, there is a flat-footed denial. They are now accepting that the situation is beyond their control and that they need help ," said Mdladlana.

He said many issues were "raised sharply" with the Zimbabweans, including reports of state-sponsored violence and land invasions.

Zimbabwe's human rights groups are pressing for the withdrawal of troops from rural areas.

The main human rights watchdog, Zimrights, has petitioned Defence Minister Sidney Sekeramayi to urgently withdraw military units from rural Matabeleland and some townships, saying their presence is heightening fears ahead of the presidential elections in March.

Zimrights's executive director Munyaradzi Bidi said their deployment was meant to "instil and maintain fear" in Matabeleland, where the infamous Fifth Brigade massaccred an estimated 20 000 civilians in the 1980s.

Mathula Lusinga of the Movement for Democratic Change said villagers in Tsholotsho, Matabeleland, had reported this week that soldiers were firing shots into the air at night to frighten people.

While the Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, denied that army units were in Matabeleland, Sekeramayi confirmed in Parliament this week that units were in the province.

Sekeramayi said the army had a duty to defend the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country and to ensure that peace and tranquility prevail". - The Sunday Times

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