HARARE -- The top leaders of Zimbabwe’s three ruling parties will tomorrow meet to discuss ways to end political violence and how to quicken national healing and reconciliation, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party said in a statement Monday.

“The three national executive bodies from the three main political parties in the Global Political Agreement (GPA) meet in Harare on Wednesday to map out how best they can deal with the issue of the snail’s pace of national healing and politically motivated intimidation among other critical issues,” the MDC said in a statement.

“This is a ground-breaking meeting in the history of Zimbabwe as the three executive bodies of the MDC, ZANU PF and Professor Arthur Mutambara’s party meet to hold a crucial indaba on how to deal with political violence and intimidation affecting the people of Zimbabwe.”

There was no immediate confirmation of the planned meeting by ZANU PF or the smaller MDC formation of Mutambara but Tsvangirai’s party said it hoped the meeting would address the issue of transitional justice as well as spell out ways to end political violence threatening ongoing constitutional reforms.

"This historic meeting must deal with the intimidation and violence surrounding the Constitution-making process so that the people will make their contributions in an environment of peace and tolerance," the party said.

A committee of senior ministers drawn up from ZANU PF and the two MDC formations to promote national healing and reconciliation after years of political strife and violence has achieved little since its establishment more than 12 months ago.

Zimbabwe witnessed some of its worst political violence last year after a parliamentary election that was won by the MDC while Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in a parallel presidential poll but with fewer votes to avoid a second run-off ballot.

In a bid to ensure Mugabe regained the upper hand in the second round vote, ZANU PF militia, war veterans and state security agents unleashed an orgy of violence and terror across the country, especially in rural areas many of which virtually became no-go areas for the opposition.

Tsvangirai later withdrew from the June 27 run-off election because of violence that he says killed about 200 of his supporters and displaced thousands of others.

Mugabe won the vote uncontested in a ballot that African observers denounced as a shame and Western governments refused to recognize forcing the veteran leader to agree to form a power-sharing government with Tsvangirai and Mutambara

While the political violence of the past decade has caught the attention of the world more, Zimbabwe’s darkest period remains the phase soon after the country’s 1980 independence from Britain when more than 20 000 innocent civilians from the Ndebele ethnic minority were reportedly killed during a bloody counter-insurgency drive by the army in the southern Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.

Mugabe – who some say personally ordered deployment of the army’s North Korean-trained 5th Brigade in Matabeleland and Midlands ostensibly to stop an armed insurrection against his rule – has called the killings an “act of madness”.

But the 86-year-old leader has never personally accepted responsibility for the civilian murders or formally apologised. He has not yielded to calls by human rights activists for his government to compensate victims of the brutal army operation or Gukurahundi as it is more commonly known among Zimbabweans.

By Zimonline