by Wayne Mafaro
HARARE - "This is suffering must end," Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said, his eye sweeping across scores of emaciated and pale-skinned children at a temporary cholera treatment centre set up by UNICEF in Harare's Budiriro suburb.
Budiriro, meaning development in the vernacular Shona, was built after Zimbabwe's 1980 independence from Britain - a true sign of progress.
But the working class suburb has been the hardest hit by a cholera epidemic that has killed close to 3 000 people since August, to become the most visible symbol of Zimbabwe's regression over the past decade.
"This suffering must end, we'll do everything in our power to make sure that (we) fix these problems for the good of the nation and the good of the people," Tsvangirai said.
A little while ago, Tsvangirai, who toured the cholera centre on Thursday, had tried to cheer up a little girl admitted at treatment centre.
"How are you feeling now?" Tsvangirai asked the eight-year old girl.
She appeared disinterested either because she was too shy with all eyes that focused on her as the opposition leader talked to her or most probably, the girl was just too weakened by disease.
Health workers at the institution said that although there were few people in the wards, the outbreak had not yet been brought under control, contrary to frequent claims by President Robert Mugabe's government.
And the evidence abounds that cholera is still wrecking havoc among Zimbabweans. At the outpatient section at the camp, a woman in her early 30s narrated how she and her two children had been having running stomachs for the past week.
"My other child is now admitted after doctors said he had contracted cholera," she said, the mention of he ill child appearing to drive her close to tears.
The cholera epidemic, coupled with acute food shortages, has highlighted Zimbabwe's worsening economic and humanitarian crisis that critics blame on mismanagement by President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the country since independence.
Figures released by the World Health Organisation on Thursday showed that the cholera death toll in Zimbabwe had soared to 2 755, with 48 623 people suspected to be infected.
The latest numbers show a sharp rise in fatalities and new infections from statistics published earlier while relief agencies inside Zimbabwe say the disease that at one time Mugabe claimed had been brought under control is quickly spreading from cities and towns to rural areas - some too remote for health workers to access.
Western leaders and some African leaders alarmed by rising deaths due to cholera have in recent months stepped up calls for Mugabe's resignation, while Graca Machel, the wife of Nelson Mandela, said on Wednesday southern Africa leaders had allowed innocent lives to be lost needlessly by not confronting Mugabe over Zimbabwe's crisis.
But the regional SADC alliance and the African Union led by the continent's economic powerhouse, South Africa, have rejected calls to pressure Mugabe to quit and insist a power-sharing government between the veteran ruler and Tsvangirai is the best way to end Zimbabwe's political, economic and humanitarian crises.
SADC leaders meet Mugabe and Tsvangirai in South Africa next Monday to try to push them into agreement on a new government of national unity.
However similar meetings by regional leaders -the latest such meeting was held in Harare earlier this week - have failed to pressure the Zimbabwean rivals into a unity government. Analysts think next Monday's meeting will be no different.
Addressing journalists after the tour, Tsvangirai said that he wanted problems around the formation of a power-sharing government resolved soon so that it can begin to find solutions to the plight of many Zimbabweans, most of them "man-made".
The opposition leader, who defeated Mugabe in a first round presidential vote last March but pulled out of the second round ballot citing violence against members of his MDC party, said he was hopeful next week's regional summit could end the power-sharing deadlock.
"I hope that if SADC leaders approach the problem with an objective point of view, I'm sure we should be able to resolve the matter," said Tsvangirai.
But Tsvangirai said a unity government could only function effectively if Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party agreed to cede some of its power instead of wanting to incorporate the MDC as a junior partner in government.
Tsvangirai said: "Yes forming a government which is functional can respond to some of the problems the people are facing but what we have here is totally different. We have a party that has lost an election, which has accepted to negotiate but does not want to cede power in line with the power-sharing ideals.
"Why is it difficult for ZANU PF to appreciate that this is the essence of sharing power not of dominating, not of trying to make the MDC a junior partner, not of trying to co-opt but genuine power-sharing.
"So yes, we are committed to the agreement but subject to the resolution of these outstanding issues and I'm hoping that SADC will appreciate that the MDC is not the one that is obstructionist in the formation of this government."
It remains to be seen whether regional leaders will see it that way on Monday. But whatever SADC leaders decide to do about Zimbabwe, analysts are convinced not much recovery can ever take place in the country without a unity government.
In addition to cholera, Zimbabwe's crisis is also seen in acute shortages of food and basic commodities, deepening poverty and the world's highest inflation rate of more than 231 million percent.