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Zimbabwe's Global Political Agreement implementation: 4 years on at best faltering, at worst failing
Zimbabwean Civil Society Organisations
September 15, 2012

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Today 15 September 2012 marks the 4th Anniversary of the signing of the Global Political Agreement. The Zimbabwe Europe Network (ZEN) and its National Reference Group; Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, National Association of Non Governmental Organisations (NANGO), Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) have made the following observations on the implementation of the agreement this far.

Introduction

Four years have lapsed since the official signing of the SADC mediated Global Political Agreement (GPA) on 15 September 2008. The GPA, which led to the formation of the Inclusive Government in Zimbabwe in February 2009, was pitched as a high level solution to the political malaise that had become the order of the day in Zimbabwe. By its own admission as cited in the GPA Article II (2), parties to the Inclusive Government made a commitment to: " . . . create a genuine, viable, permanent, sustainable and nationally acceptable solution to the Zimbabwe situation. . ."

Sponsored and guaranteed by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) as an "African Solution to an African Problem", the Inclusive Government was meant to be an experiment in national stability and democratisation, with the GPA providing the theory of change that propelled and dictated how the government would operate and what it should have achieved. In short the GPA theory was predicated on the hypothesis that, an inclusive approach to governing and problem solving by the 3 major political parties represented in parliament, with the GPA as a guide, would result in the reduction of political instability, arrest of the economic free-fall, halt the humanitarian crisis, and institution of democratic reforms - generally providing an inclusive approach to the resolution of the Zimbabwean crisis.

At its formation, the Inclusive government and GPA epoch was largely characterised as an interregnum, or transition. And like any other transition, it has proved to be not just a contested terrain, but also one bereft of progress and filled with great uncertainty. The uncertainty and contests within this epoch have been attributed to several things. Chief among them have been clear philosophical and political differences around what the period is supposed to be about. Democratic actors assumed that the shared view was that the transition was one from a militarised electoral authoritarian regime to a more democratic dispensation, while the nationalists and guards of the ancient regime believed that it was not a transition at all but just a brief pit stop, allowing them to recover their legitimacy, spruce up a soiled image and move back to governing the country as dictated not by the will of the people but by virtue of their liberation war credentials. This understanding is clearly summed up by an assertion made by President Mugabe in 2008 and echoed by many of his followers that:

"We can never accept that our country, which we won through the barrel of the gun, can be taken merely by an 'x' made by a ballpoint pen. Zvino ballpoint pen icharwisana ne AK (will the pen fight the AK rifle). Is there going to be a struggle between the two? Liyekele ikhupikisana lombhobho (do not argue with the gun)."

Any assessment of the GPA therefore has to be predicated on proving or disproving the above theory. A quick assessment of where the GPA is with regards to implementation, as well as any assessment of the Inclusive Government's operations, would quite clearly point to, at best - a faltering experiment, and at worst failing transition. What follows is a potted analysis of the Inclusive Government's performance, and a process audit on implementation of selected processes from the GPA, both informed by the founding intent of both the agreement and the government it created.

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