HARARE – President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai are today expected to discuss a widening crackdown by state security forces against the premier’s supporters threatening to split the troubled Harare coalition government.

Mugabe, Tsvangirai and controversial Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara usually hold meetings every Monday to deliberate on issues affecting the coalition government.

But insiders said over the weekend that today’s meeting would be a no-holds barred affair in the wake of the ouster of Tsvangirai’s national chairman, Lovemore Moyo, as Speaker of Parliament, the arrest of his energy minister Elton Mangoma and several other legislators and officials from the popular faction of the Movement for Democratic Change.

Moyo was dethroned as Speaker last Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled that his election was irregular, while Mangoma was arrested on allegations that he abused his office by awarding a little-known South Africa firm to supply fuel without going to tender.

The ouster of Moyo and the arrest Mangoma, who spent the weekend at Harare Remand Prison, has angered Tsvangirai who last Thursday threatened to pull out of the unity government citing Mugabe’s machinations to frustrate the MDC in government.

The meeting today also comes in the wake of reports of renewed political violence amid claims that state security agents are on a drive to arrest civil society activists who have been at the forefront of exposing political violence and human rights abuses.

On Saturday police arrested Macdonald Lewanika, the director of Crisis in Zimbabwe

Coalition for as yet unknown reasons.

An alert from Crisis circulated on Saturday said Lewanika was detained at Makoni Police station in Chitungwiza town, about 25km east of Harare.

On Thursday police visited the offices of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum where they demanded to see its director Abel Chikomo who, however was not in the office.

Chikomo is expected report to police today amid fears he could be arrested.

Scores of other leaders and activists of the MDC-T and its civil society allies are either being held in jail or facing charges that the former opposition party says are trumped up and an attempt to destroy its structures ahead of a key constitution referendum later this year and elections that should follow the plebiscite.

Tsvangirai has said hawks within ZANU PF were behind the harassment of MDC members describing the actions of the hardliners as causing “pain and suffering”.

But the former opposition chief, who has partially withdrawn his party from the unity government before, also showed how limited his options were, calling last week for a clean divorce with ZANU PF while at the same time vowing that the MDC-T would stick with the troubled transition process.

He said: “If there is a breakdown in the relationship of the parties in the GPA, it is important for the parties to agree on a clean divorce. As far as we are concerned, the roadmap that President Zuma (Jacob) has committed himself to draw up is the only solution to this madness.”

Zuma is the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s official mediator between Tsvangirai and Mugabe, two bitter foes who only agreed to form a unity government under immense pressure from the regional body following inconclusive elections in 2008.

The South African leader is understood to be drafting a roadmap that should see Zimbabwe hold free and fair elections. Under Zuma’s roadmap, elections will follow a referendum on a new constitution and will also set milestones such as electoral reforms, the role of security forces and how to smoothly transfer power.

But analysts say escalating political violence perpetrated by hardline elements in ZANU PF party and the military could render Zuma’s roadmap meaningless

By Zimonline