Zimbabwe’s opposition notched up a victory on Friday night when Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, agreed to expand his mediation efforts in Zimbabwe to include the African Union, the United Nations and southern Africa’s regional bloc.

Mr Mbeki was responding to intense international criticism of his quiet diplomacy approach to the Zimbabwe crisis. The shift followed a meeting in Pretoria in which Mr Mbeki briefed Jean Ping, the AU’s top diplomat, and Haile Menkerios, the UN special envoy on Zimbabwe, on his attempts to broker a deal between President Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.