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Resistance and denial: Zimbabwe's stalled reform agenda
International
Crisis Group
November 16, 2011
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Overview
Transition and
reform appear stalemated in Zimbabwe. Profound deficits remain in
implementation of the Global
Political Agreement (GPA) signed by Zimbabwe's three main
political parties in September 2008. Prospects are remote for engaging
core security and law-and-order concerns before elections that are
anticipated within twenty months. Nothing significant has changed
in the half year since April 2011, when the GPA's Periodic
Review Mechanism reported that most outstanding issues were unresolved;
that negotiated solutions are followed by interminable delays in
execution appears to have become an entrenched pattern. Opportunities
to build a foundation for sustainable political and economic recovery
are consistently undermined. Violence and repression are pressing
concerns; the police appear unwilling or unable to provide effective
deterrence or remedy and the expectation of a more proactive engagement
by the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC) around
issues of political violence has yet to bear fruit.
The promise
that the regional organisation, the Southern African Development
Community (SADC), would take a more robust stand following the 31
March communiqué of its Organ Troika on Politics, Defence
and Security has not yet been adequately borne out. The two competing
formations of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have largely
welcomed the more proactive engagement of SADC's facilitation
team, headed by South African President Jacob Zuma. But President
Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic
Front (ZANU-PF) party, which retains the dominant role in the current
power sharing arrangement, has frustrated it, not least because
it wishes to preserve the monopoly control of the security sector
it relies on as the ultimate line of defence for its hegemony.
An election
endgame was implicit in the GPA. The questions were always when
would the vote be held, and what reform could be achieved beforehand.
SADC rejected ZANU-PF's claim that conditions for free and
fair elections have or shortly can be met and its demand for a 2011
vote, saying that reforms were needed first. ZANU-PF's most
recent call, in September, for elections in the first quarter of
2012 seems equally unrealistic; most analysts concur that the earliest
the country could conceivably be ready is late that year. The likelihood
of further delays around finalisation of the constitution-writing
process and implementation of election and media reform, as well
as the security and law-and-order considerations, suggest, however,
that the first half of 2013 is much more realistic.
An upsurge in
political violence and repression in late October and early November,
compounded by allegations of ZANU-PF and police complicity, has
been interpreted by several analysts as a renewed attempt to force
collapse of the GPA and an early vote. Mugabe's recent admission
that he cannot force a 2012 date suggests the realisation is growing
within the party that efforts to impose elections without consensus
would be counter-productive, but powerful forces within it, especially
those pushing for Mugabe's re-election candidacy, remain committed
to a vote sooner rather than later. ZANU-PF's conference in
Bulawayo on 6-10 December should clarify what it will push for.
SADC, as guarantors
with the African Union of the GPA, needs to secure tangible progress
on several key issues if elections are ultimately to be held in
conditions that are sufficiently free and fair. The divisive security
and law and order issues have essentially been ignored or avoided
in the inter-party negotiations. The regional organisation needs
to find a way to change this. Its strategy has been to reduce the
GPA's reform agenda to a more manageable set of priorities
and to strengthen monitoring of implementation. A draft election
roadmap, reflecting unresolved GPA concerns, has been drawn up,
but key disagreements on political violence, security sector reform,
composition of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and GPA monitoring
remain unresolved. In June, SADC approved the Organ Troika's
recommendation to deploy a technical team to work with the JOMIC.
Augmenting SADC's eyes and ears is essential to its ability
to facilitate agreements, but symptomatically the deployment has
still not happened.
Since the signing
of the GPA, Crisis Group has continually identified two major transition
challenges: to develop a mature political system that enables both
cooperation and responsible competition between the political parties,
and to cope with security issues that threaten to undermine meaningful
reform. This briefing assesses SADC's post-March repositioning,
as well as political and institutional developments related to the
evolving security situation.
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