By Peta Thornycroft and Beauregard Tromp
Contact between the South African government and Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has ceased.
MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube, who was the main contact between the two, said at the weekend: "I am not available to the South Africans any longer."
Paul Themba Nyathi, MDC spokesperson, said: "From his point of view, he acted in good faith, in seriousness, and he discovered he had been used, so one should imagine he is intractably angry. That is what has happened."
'He is not talking to the South Africans' William Bango, spokesperson for MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai, said: "He is not talking to the South Africans either as far as I know."
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A senior South African foreign affairs source said the news of the MDC's decision had come as a shock.
"We haven't heard anything from them. We've been talking to them and of course they weren't happy with the result of the election and about what the observers had to say. But nothing like this," he said.
The ruling Zanu-PF won 78 out of 120 elected parliamentary seats at the March 31 election which, together with 30 MPs appointed by President Robert Mugabe, gives it a two-thirds majority allowing it to change the constitution.
The MDC won 41 seats, down 16 from 2000 when it came within three seats of winning a parliamentary majority.
The real inflation rate is between 300 and 400 percent The opposition claims the results were rigged and that the voters' roll is in a shambles. Meanwhile, several diplomatic missions, including South Africa, are becoming increasingly alarmed at yet another sudden dive in the economy off an already low base.
With domestic debt having trebled since February, to $1,1-billion (about R6,8-billion) according to information on the website of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, foreign currency reserves now meet less than 10 percent of demand from the productive sector.
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