Given a system (V, T, f, k), where V is a finite set, T ⊆ V , f : 2 V → R is a submodular function and k ≥ 2 is an integer, the general multiway partition problem (MPP) asks to find a k-partition P = {V 1 , V 2 ,. . ., V k } of V that satisfies V i ∩ T = ∅ for all i and minimizes f (V 1) + f (V 2) + • • • + f (V k), where P is a k-partition of V if (i) V i = ∅, (ii) V i ∩ V j = ∅, i = j, and (iii) V 1 ∪ V 2 ∪ • • • ∪ V k = V hold. MPP formulation captures a generalization in submodular systems of many NP-hard problems such as k-way cut, multiterminal cut, target split and their generalizations in hypergraphs. This paper presents a simple and unified framework for developing and analyzing approximation algorithms for various MPPs.