Pretoria - President Kgalema Motlanthe will on Monday host an extra-ordinary Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit to discuss the political deadlock in Zimbabwe.
The Department of Foreign Affairs on Thursday confirmed the summit is being convened to discuss the implementation of the Zimbabwean Global Political Agreement, signed in 2008, between ZANU-PF and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formations.
Former President Thabo Mbeki, who is also the SADC facilitator between the political parties in Zimbabwean, will be present at the summit, the department said.
The convening of the summit on Monday follows a decision of the meeting held in Harare, Zimbabwe on 19 January 2009.
The meeting in Harare was attended by President Motlanthe, Mozambican President Armando Guebuza as Deputy Chairperson of SADC's Politics, Defence and Security organ, Mr Mbeki as well as Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and the two MDC leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara.
The department highlighted that the summit is expected to be attended by all 14 member-states of SADC as well as the leaders of the two MDC formations.
An extra-ordinary SADC summit held in Johannesburg on 9 November 2008, ended after marathon discussions with no agreement reached on the division of government portfolios between the ruling ZANU-PF and the MDC formations.
Briefing media after the November SADC summit, Mr Tsvangirai said: "A great opportunity has been missed by the Southern African Development Community [SADC] to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe.
"We are shocked and saddened that the [Extra-Ordinary Heads of State and Government] SADC Summit has failed to deal with outstanding issues."
The outstanding issues, Mr Tsvangirai said, related to more than just the allocation of the Ministry of Home Affairs to a particular party, but to the fact that the historic Global Political Agreement, while having been signed on 15 September 2008, is yet to be implemented.
Executive Secretary of SADC, Dr Tomaz Augusto Salomao, told media that SADC had ruled that the Ministry of Home Affairs was to be co-managed between ZANU-PF and Mr Tsvangirai's MDC faction.
"The efficacy of the [co-sharing] arrangement [will] be reviewed after six months by the parties with the assistance of the guarantors including SADC, the African Union [AU] and the facilitator [former President Thabo Mbeki]," said Dr Salomao.
Mr Tsvangirai, however, rejected SADC's proposal saying the proposal had not been agreed to by all parties, and would simply not work.
Briefing media from the Union Buildings last week, Foreign Affairs Director General Dr Ayanda Ntsaluba said South Africa hoped Zimbabwe's Parliament would pass Constitutional Amendment 19, which makes provision for the creation of the post of Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.
Zimbabwe's Harare Tribune on Tuesday reported that: "Hours before Tuesday's parliament session was to open, Zimbabwe's President and opposition factions ended 12 hours of talks with no progress on the unity deal.
"A special regional summit was set for next week to try to break the deadlock.
"A proposed Constitutional Amendment [19] would, among other steps, create the prime minister's post MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai is to hold in the unity government.
"President Robert Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, would remain president."
