Zimbabwe in its own words

One of the huge problems in trying to understand what the hell is going on in Zimbabwe is the fact that the UK media report everything from a very strange point of view. It's not so much that they're anti-Mugabe (everyone is) as that they take a vastly more extreme view of Zimbabwean politics than even the furthest fringe of the Zimbabwean anti-Mugabe movement; two UK newspapers have published editorials in favour of military invasion of Zimbabwe, when the official policy of the MDC is that it isn't even in favour of trade sanctions. It's as if the Boston Globe were to have reported on the Northern Irish conflict from the point of view of someone who thought that the Republic should invade.

With that in mind check this out, from Masipula Sitole's thinktank. It's a verbatim report (and for that reason occasionally makes hard reading) of a speaker meeting at which several elements of Zim civil society get their say, uninterrupted and not taken out of context. It's not like Mugabe is massively popular at the meeting or anything, but there's an atmosphere of reality to it which is totally absent from UK comment; even the ZANU-PF guy present is interesting, albeit that his speech is a practically self-parodic piece of authoritarian bluster. Primary sources like this are surely what the Internet's for.

Update: Among other interesting things, note that MPOI definitely regards MDC-Tsangverai and MDC-Mutambara as two separate political parties rather than factions of a single party. Even getting basic information like this is ludicrously hard if you're dependent on the UK press.