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Step one on a roadmap in Zimbabwe must be Mugabe's retirement next year
Comment, Cape Times (SA)
March 26, 2007

http://www.zwnews.com/print.cfm?ArticleID=16325

Was Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad playing the cunning octopus on Friday? Was he squirting ink to conceal some "quiet" Zimbabwe diplomacy by his seniors? Pahad delivered a blustering attack that day on the South Africa media, for what he implied was its unhelpful criticism of his government's diplomacy on Zimbabwe. (He said he preferred to call it "constructive", rather than "quiet" diplomacy). He insisted there was plenty of that going on, including frequent consultations with both the ruling Zanu PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). On that same day, Zimbabwe's vice- president, Joyce Mujuru, was visiting Pretoria, apparently to meet her counterpart Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and, it is rumoured, also President Thabo Mbeki. The South African government insisted her visit was private, so it could not divulge who she was meeting and why.

However, Zimbabwean government sources reportedly said that her main aim was to lobby the South African government's support to persuade Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to retire next year. If that was what Mujuru was doing, then Pahad could have been practising what he was preaching - creating noise to conceal the muffled sounds of quiet diplomacy - presumably from the ears of Mugabe mainly. Would that it were so! Mujuru and her main rival to succeed Mugabe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, are believed to agree on one thing - the need for Mugabe's imminent departure. The destruction of the economy is now so comprehensive that it has begun to affect even the "chefs", who had been relatively immune before. So the likes of Mujuru and Mnangagwa appear to have thwarted Mugabe's original plan to change the constitution to synchronise presidential and parliamentary elections. This would enable him to extend his term of office from next year until 2010. But Mugabe' response has been to threaten, then to stand again next year, leaving him in power until 2014 when he will be 90.

Some Zanu PF officials believe the horrifying prospect of a nonagenarian president destroying the remaining fragments of the economy, may persuade the party's central committee, which meets this week, to grant Mugabe his original wish to stay on until 2010. It is pretty certain that Mbeki wants Mugabe to step down. Before the last presidential election in 2005, the ANC sent a delegation to Harare to ask Zanu PF to nominate another candidate. The party refused. For some time Mbeki's preferred solution for the Zimbabwe crisis has been to get a new president from within Zanu PF, rather than a new ruling party to replace Zanu PF. The MDC's implosion since then has now also persuaded most of the international community that this is the only possible route to change. But is that was what Mujuru was doing here? What does she think South Africa can do? Over the next fortnight or so, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is to hold a summit in Tanzania to discuss the Zimbabwe crisis.

Perhaps that summit can agree that step one on a roadmap must be Mugabe's retirement next year, although Zimbabwe's friends are unlikely to agree. But in any case, what if he simply says "go to hell", as he probably will? It has been suggested that SADC could offer him immunity against prosecution for his many crimes against humanity. But that does power does not seem to lie within the SADC's remit. The SADC could also encourage the dissidents in the Zanu PF camp, by offering them incentives if they do get rid of Mugabe. But that would probably need to be balanced by some disincentives - in the form of growing regional isolation - if they don't. In other words, even constructive diplomacy would seem to need to include the threat of an element of destructive diplomacy if it hopes to succeed. South Africa and the rest of the SADC have often deplored what they see as the objective of countries like Britain in Zimbabwe - regime change. Yet even they now seem to acknowledge that is all that can now save the country.

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