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Considering
the alternatives Mugabe should be begging Mbeki for a solution
Patrick Laurence, The Sunday Independent (SA)
June 24, 2007
The recent talks
in Pretoria between the main political adversaries in Zimbabwe mark
the first public sign of progress in President Thabo Mbeki's quest
to facilitate a peaceful settlement of the potentially incandescent
political dispute in Zimbabwe. Mbeki, of course, is acting with
the backing of the Southern African Development Community which,
at a summit of heads of state in Tanzania in March, gave him a mandate
to assume the role of peacemaker. It is easy to scoff and observe
that a preliminary meeting between the main adversaries - President
Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF and the majority and minority factions of
its main political opponent, the Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) - is not a significant achievement. But the task of persuading
the main political parties to meet at all almost certainly required
a finely matched combination of tact and persistence.
Nevertheless, a long
and hard road still lies ahead. As the Chinese proverb has it, even
a 1 000-mile journey has to begin with a first step. But there are
many obstacles and one is undoubtedly Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's
wily and increasingly unpredictable octogenarian president. While
he seems to have given his blessing to participation in the Mbeki-orchestrated
settlement talks by sending a Zanu PF delegation powered by two
cabinet ministers, his actions in Zimbabwe raise doubts about his
sincerity. These actions include the seizure of the passport of
Arthur Mutambara, the leader of the minority faction of the MDC,
on the eve of his departure to a Save Zimbabwe campaign in Europe.
Justifiably it is described as a display of heavy-handedness that
, does not augur well for a successful outcome of Mbeki's initiative.
Further actions calculated
to harass and alienate opposition politicians include, according
to Mutambara, the abduction of two MDC activists who were later
found dead, and the continued detention by police of MDC stalwarts,
one of whom is a member of parliament, on trumped-up charges. Referring
to "detention, abduction, torture and murder" of MDC activists,
Mutambara says: "What is happening right now is an indication
that Mugabe is not ready for any serious talks with the opposition."
While apparently seeking to disrupt and intimidate the MDC, some
of whose activists are still suffering from injuries inflicted on
them by Zimbabwean police and soldiers in March, Mugabe is simultaneously
involved in wooing the MDC. As a recent report on Zimbabwe on the
News24 website notes, Mugabe departed from the text of his speech
at a function marking the handing over of tractors to farmers when
he spotted MDC political opponents and welcomed them with these
words: "We are happy they are here. They are part of us in
the [Zimbabwean] nation and [political differences] can never make
them alien . . . After all, we eat together."
Mugabe might be pursuing
a two-track policy with the MDC, striving simultaneously to intimidate
and woo them, adopting a hard-cop, soft-cop stratagem, to lure and
drive them into his camp, a gambit which, if successful, will enable
him to tell Mbeki that Zimbabwe can and will solve its problems
without the South African president as an honest broker. As long
as Mugabe clings to power, as he seems intent on doing by standing
for re-election as president next year and thereby prolonging his
presidential tenure for another seven years, he risks being toppled
in one of two ways: either in a sudden and dramatic implosion or
in a military or palace coup. With inflation running at 4 530 percent,
according to information leaked to The Standard by an official in
Zimbabwe's Central Statistical Office, it does not require the intelligence
of an Einstein to realise that the implications are extremely ominous.
The departing United
States ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell, has left no one
in doubt about the fragility of the situation: he said the "economic
madness" had made it impossible for Mugabe to remain in power
much longer. The other threat to Mugabe is a palace coup to replace
him as Zanu PF's leader and as Zimbabwe's president. The threat
emanates - in theory if not yet in practice - from two different
camps led by rival contenders to succeed him. The first is headed
is by Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former Zimbabwean security generalissimo
who, after reportedly carving out a fortune for himself as a carpetbagger
in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the late 1990s, is now biding
his time as minister of rural housing. The public face of the second
is Vice-President Joyce Mujuru, though many observers believe she
is a front for her husband Solomon Mujuru, the former commander
of the Zimbabwean African National Army and now an immensely wealthy
businessman.
Mugabe's decision to
stand for re-election next year puts the chances of Mnangagwa and
the Mujurus succeeding him in jeopardy, as it could precipitate
an implosion that would bury all of them and impoverish the entire
nation, including Mujuru. The prospect of a palace coup by either
camp or even both camps acting in concert increases as the situation
deteriorates. The past fortnight has witnessed the leaking of information
about a pre-emptive strike by Mugabe loyalists against an attempted
coup by a former army officer and several serving officers, all
of whom have appeared on charges of treason in an in-camera court
hearing. The alleged conspiracy, which some observers have described
as an attempt by Mnangagwa's rivals to denigrate him in the eyes
of Mugabe, is rightly seen as a sign of the febrile atmosphere in
Zimbabwe.
If Mugabe persists in
pursuing his ambition to serve another seven years as president,
he risks more than displacement in a coup. A successful coup could
be the prelude to Mugabe's indictment for crimes against humanity.
The British minister responsible for Africa, David Triesman, warns
that it is a possibility. Perhaps he has in mind the ruthless crushing
by the Mugabe government of the "Matabele rebellion" in
the 1980s. Triesman refers pointedly to the indictment in the International
Court of Justice in the Hague of Charles Taylor, the ousted dictator
of Liberia. If Mugabe wants to avoid the possibility of an implosion,
being the target of a coup or the accused in a trial on charges
of gross abuse of human rights, he would be well advised to help
Mbeki put together a settlement that offers him a retirement package
and indemnity from prosecution.
Independent political
analyst Patrick Laurence is a contributing editor to The Star
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