The Wardman Wire

Back in June 2008, one of the key “quiet” news sources for Bloggers and Journalists tracking the Zimbabwe elections was a Twitter feed run by the Zimbabwe Civic Action Support Group alongside their blog Sokwanele (”Enough is Enough”).

I ran a Flick-R photo feed about abuse and violence meted out by Robert Mugabe’s followers to those opposing his regime in the elections in Zimbabwe for several weeks.

Bur the Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/sokwanele was the place for breaking news. Here are the entries from late May covering the detention of Morgan Tsvangirai.

Here’s the Tweet that broke the news.

I’ve wanted to return to covering developments in Zimbabwe.

The BBC reports that a deal has been reached between Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangarai:

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe have reached a deal to share power.

After mediating four days of talks in Harare, South African President Thabo Mbeki said the deal would be signed and made public on Monday.

Mr Mugabe has not yet commented. The two sides had already agreed that Mr Tsvangirai would be prime minister with Mr Mugabe staying on as president.

But negotiations had faltered over how the two sides were to share power.

Mr Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, was first to announce the deal as the talks ended.

Later, Mr Mbeki told a news conference: “An agreement has been reached about all the matters on the agenda of the negotiations.”

We won’t see the detail until Monday. I have no idea whether it will work; I am sure that it will require an enormous commitment from Civil Society to police their government.

It is called “historic” by some, but really the opposite is true. Instead of being the “first tentative step towards searching for a solution to a country that is in crisis”, it is a blow to democracy.
Tsvangirai has made a massive mistake by agreeing to talk with Mugabe about a power-sharing agreement. There can be [...]