HARARE – Southern African leaders should pressure Zimbabwe's power-sharing government to end ongoing human rights violations, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a new report released ahead of a key regional summit next week that will discuss the six-month old Harare administration.

Heads of state and government from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) will hold their annual summit meeting in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, on September 7 and 8.

The 20-page HRW report, "False Dawn: The Zimbabwe Power-Sharing Government's Failure to Deliver Human Rights Improvements," highlights the transitional government's lack of progress in rights reforms in the six months since it was created.

President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party has demonstrated a lack of political will to effect change and wields more power than the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formations headed by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his deputy Arthur Mutambara, the report said.

Police, state prosecutors, and court officials aligned to ZANU PF conduct politically motivated prosecutions of MDC legislators and activists, and fail to ensure justice for victims of abuses or to hold perpetrators of human rights violations to account.

"Southern African leaders should stop looking at Zimbabwe through rose-colored glasses," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director of HRW. "The region's leaders need to press Zimbabwe openly and publicly for human rights reforms to prevent the country from backsliding into state-sponsored violence and chaos."

At the summit meeting, heads of state are also expected to assess Zimbabwe's compliance with a number of rulings by the SADC Tribunal on illegal land seizures in Zimbabwe.

President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, the organisation's current chairman, is also expected to brief leaders on the progress made by Zimbabwe's power-sharing government, which has been in place since February.

The government was created by a SADC-brokered September 2008 agreement, which followed a period when ZANU PF and its allies unleashed a campaign of violence to prevent an MDC electoral win.

The HRW urged regional leaders to extract concrete commitments on human rights from the government of Zimbabwe and to tie them to specific benchmarks for progress within a clear time frame.

The leaders were also urged to raise concerns about Zimbabwe's failure to enact basic institutional and legislative reforms that would guarantee the rule of law as well as fundamental rights for Zimbabweans.

"SADC leaders should stand with the people of Zimbabwe by calling for urgent reforms to address the country's political and human rights crisis," said Gagnon. "Without these necessary changes, Zimbabwe's inclusive government will continue to be built on sand."

Meanwhile South Africa’s Foreign Affairs department said on Monday that Pretoria was “encouraged” by the improving human rights situation in its northern neighbour and urged Zimbabwe’s leaders to stick to commitments made under their power-sharing agreement.

"We are encouraged that by all accounts the human rights situation has improved," Foreign Affairs director general Ayanda Ntsaluba said. "Instead of Zimbabwe being on a downward spiral we believe it is at the start of a recovery."

Ntsaluba said it was important for Mugabe and Tsvangirai to sort out their differences in order to encourage international investment 

By Zimonline