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Back to the future
Stephen Chan
From The Day After Mugabe, Africa Research Institute
November 01, 2007

Read more from The Day After Mugabe: Prospects for change in Zimbabwe

http://www.crookedlimb.net/ARI/research-papers.php

With or without Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Zimbabwe is not at a point where it can sink no further. Zaïre under Mobutu, Uganda in the aftermath of Amin, genocide in Rwanda, and the civil wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone all stand as examples of the worse that could still come.

Powerful actors on all sides in Zimbabwe are realising that worse must not come. If their influence and interests are to survive, the future has to be rescued from the hands of the current president. The last sacrifice in the struggle for national liberation will be Mugabe himself, the father of the nationalist movement.

Within Mugabe's own party, Zanu-PF, frantic realignments took place in early to mid-2007. Among the aspiring successors, several shared a common history. Solomon Mujuru, the retired army commander, and his wife Joyce Mujuru, currently vice-president, command significant military credentials. Many top soldiers are behind them.

Their hands would be stronger still if Didymus Mutasa, minister of security and architect of much of the current internal repression, chooses to throw his hat into their ring. An alliance with Mutasa would bring the Central Intelligence Organisation onto the side of the Mujurus.

The chief rival to the Mujuru camp is Emerson Mnangagwa. As a former defence minister, he can draw on his own military alliances. If Mnangagwa opts to cooperate with the Mujurus, their combined resources would command decisive coercive force in the military and security agencies.

Together, these factions would present a formidable inducement to Mugabe not to persevere beyond 2008. But their triumph would become the triumph of coercive powers. Securocrats will run Zimbabwe, and that is not a good omen for democracy.

Mugabe had good reason to seek to divide and rule these two factions. His efforts to do so were successful by mid-2007. He had 'taken out the insurance' of fashioning his own presidential force from Zanu's youth militia - the 'Green Bombers'. This tactic almost mimicked the last act of prime minister Abel Muzorewa, who assembled a personal militia in the final days of Ian Smith's minority white regime.

Relying on this method of brutal political policing alone would have been a sign of desperation. The 'Bombers' are neither disciplined, nor heavily armed. If it had come to a fight, with Mugabe refusing to go, it would not have been civil war - the Bombers could never withstand an organised military push. But they could cause much bloodshed in a showdown.

As it was, the sheer combination of divisions between the Mujurus and Mnangagwa, and the fiercely-disciplined sense of party within ZANU-PF, meant that Mugabe could stand his ground without physical conflict. This is something under-appreciated by the West. There are some seven factions within the party, of which those with military backing are the strongest. But all the factions will refuse, beyond a certain key point, to destabilise the party.

This something that the also-disciplined ANC in South Africa recognises. Mbeki and the ANC spend more time talking to what it hopes will be the influential factions within ZANU-PF than to the two opposition MDCs. The struggle for influence is unabating and the reason why someone like Gideon Gono, the governor of the reserve bank, is still in the mix is because the South ASsfricans want him to remain in the mix. He is the only fiscal discipline left, even if that is not very much. It is on people like him that the South Africans know that the recovery must be built.

But when can the recovery start? Not while Mugabe is still at the helm. And Mugabe is in belligerent mood. His fighting talk has become more militant, and the lashing out - both verbal, and in attacks on the opposition - seems now a permanent departure from his former style. Mugabe had always sought to give the impression of being in control. He acted calmly, preferring to taunt his opponents with disdainful sarcasm. There is no sarcasm now.

The opposition - the two MDCs - are edging towards unity. But they have not sustained this movement from the united protests of early March. They have a powerful incentive to cooperate if they are to secure an effective role in the political brokering that lies ahead. But that brokering has reached a standstill. The South Africans had been hoping Mugabe might stand down by August 2007, provided he received certain guarantees.

Those guarantees were to do with immunities from prosecution in his retirement. He did not want to confront the fate of Chiluba in Zambia and, above all, he pointed to the fate of Charles Taylor in Liberia. There, the Nigerians had promised him immunities but Taylor is now on trial at The Hague. In negotiations in 2007 the South Africans had promised Mugabe immunities and a safe retirement, but had no answer to the fears Mugabe raised based on Taylor. But even most members of the opposition would accept immunities for Mugabe. Everyone knows nothing can restart with him on the scene.

Morgan Tsvangirai has, as ever, shown immense courage - and even Arthur Mutambara has now been blooded. They are closer together than before. But the two MDCs had been ineffectual for so long that there is no reason to predict a 'last push' sufficient to topple the old president.

The larger ambition of the opposition movements was not just to bring down Mugabe, but to democratise Zimbabwean politics. Here, it will be the South Africans who will call some decisive shots. But whatever the outcome, the horse-trading that must follow Mugabe's departure will not be very democratic.

South Africa has long sought a unity government. They would be happy with a coalition involving the Mujurus, Mnangagwa, and Tsvangirai. While they do not have a strong view on Mutambara, they will assume that it is better to have all the 'name' actors inside the government, rather than outside.

This emphasis on inclusivity will make it easier, in the post-Mugabe period, for South Africa to guide Zimbabwe into a new era of political transition. There is not much Zimbabweans will be able to do to resist. The great nationalist project will have led to foreign influence of a new - and greater - sort than ever before.

For the international community, this is likely to be enough. Whether one of the Mujurus, Mnangagwa, Tsvangirai or Mutambara is president is a smaller issue. The departure of Mugabe will be a symbolic moment for the West. Aid and investment will, slowly, resume. But this begs a terrible question: Was the West prepared to sacrifice so many Zimbabwean lives merely because of its argument with Robert Mugabe? The answer, probably, is 'Yes'. The synchronicity of Mugabe and Tony Blair both leaving office within the same contemporary epoch would be truly symbolic.

The timing, however, remains far from certain. Dissidents within Zanu-PF are not yet ready to force out Mugabe. The two MDCs are not sufficiently organised. The president, meanwhile, is fiercely resisting.

An alternative strategy for Mugabe's opponents is to prevent him from running again as president in 2008. That would mean another several months of Zimbabwe in meltdown. It might seem abstract, but there really is a big difference between inflation at its current rate of about 5000% inflation and - say - 12000% in March 2008. At that rate, many in today's Zimbabwean elite will not feel like much of an elite by next March. And all the parallel-market manoeuvrings cannot be a long-term solution to even the elite. Finally, there is only so much foreign exchange available to be transacted, and if there is nothing left for 'millionaires' to buy, of what use are the millions and prospective billions of Zimbabwean dollars?

There will; not now be a combination of both the ZANU-PF dissidents and the MDCs inviting a visiting delegation of high-level African Union presidents to 'persuade' Mugabe to accept honourable retirement. Everyone, especially the South Africans, are counting down to the March 2008 elections. There are two prospects in the South African strategy. Firstly, within a 'clean' (or cleaner) election, there is still a strong likelihood that Mugabe will win. The stubbornness of ZANU-PF party discipline and mobilisation is stronger than anything the divided MDCs have. Secondly, the South Africans hope that, having won a final endorsement, Mugabe can then be persuaded to stand down with 'honour' and that, by then, they will have worked out the package of immunities necessary to persuade him to go.

Yet, even then, it is unlikely Mugabe will go with happiness. The image of a bitter old black man as an exact parallel of that bitter old white man is a miserable record for posterity. But this is the image history is likely to retain. Mugabe, the ruthless liberation leader who, after the war was won, combined ruthlessness with, for a time, highly successful government, but, in the end, sacrificed reality for his dream of a completed nationalism.

The president, with his defiant moustache and beautifully-cut suits, has soft hands. I have noticed these hands. They are not hands that hold a hoe or spade. They do not remember how. They are hands that are used to eat with good manners and daintily.

Perhaps, when he embarked upon the seizures of land in 2000, Mugabe felt the angel of death at his shoulder. He wanted to complete his life's work. Instead, his actions have overturned the economic foundations of an independent country. Whoever next holds power in Zimbabwe might still think like a Jesuit, but should plan like a farmer - and grow food for his neighbour.

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