SA will get Zim poll invite
22/02/2008 18:15  - (SA)  

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Cape Town - South Africa will be invited to send election observers to monitor next month's polls in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe government spokesperson George Charamba said on Friday.

He said all Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries were expected to send observer missions to polls held in fellow-SADC nations.

Zimbabwe recognised that South Africa had a particular interest in the election, because its president, Thabo Mbeki, had been mediating in the "political question" in its northern neighbour.

"Naturally he wants to see the result of the mediation," he said.

"South Africa will be invited."

Invitations would also go to SADC as a whole, to East and West African regional blocs, to the African Union and to the Non-Aligned Movement.

Zimbabwe would invite specific other third-world countries, among them China.

"It will not, and I repeat not, invite the Europeans as a bloc, except for one or two countries of which details will be made know shortly," Charamba said.

South African Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said earlier this week that South Africa was fully prepared to send election observers to Zimbabwe if asked.

'Clear, loud lie'

"If South Africa is invited to participate, either in its own right or as part of SADC, it will not be found wanting," he said.

Asked about access for foreign journalists who wanted to cover the polls, Charamba said it was a myth that the British media in their entirety had been barred from covering previous elections.

"That's a clear, loud lie," he said.

"What we will never countenance is the deployment of the BBC which in flagrant violation of all the media standards that we know, has decided to be an extension of the (British) foreign and commonwealth office."

Zimbabwe holds combined local, parliamentary and presidential elections on March 29.

Both European Union and Commonwealth observers denounced as flawed the last presidential election in 2002 that saw Robert Mugabe win a new term in office, while an African Union observer mission gave the vote a clean bill of health.

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