Back to Index

Zimbabwe endgame
Allister Sparks
March 28, 2007

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe faces three critical days of pressure this week, starting with a special SADC summit in Dar es Salaam today and tomorrow, and culminating in a meeting of the ruling ZANU-PF's Central Committee on Friday, which together could mark the beginning of the end of his 27-year rule over his imploding country. The endgame really has begun.

The two meetings represent a pincer movement from both the international community and from within his own party to force him to withdraw as ZANU-PF's candidate in the presidential elections due in March next year.

Initially Mugabe was determined to postpone next year's presidential election until 2010, combining it with parliamentary elections due then in the hope of extending his tenure for another eight years - by which time he would be 92 years old.

But this plan met its first rebuff during an hour-long meeting with President Thabo Mbeki at Ghana's 50th anniversary celebrations earlier this month, when Mbeki told him bluntly it was unacceptable to South Africa which could not risk a major upheaval in its neighbouring state while hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup. On his return home Mugabe recanted, saying he would not extend his present term but would stand as ZANU-PF's presidential candidate in 2008.

Now that seems unlikely. Mugabe's violent crackdown on demonstrators protesting against the country's economic meltdown, and particularly the brutal beating of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, has backfired on him.

It is a fascinating case of cause and effect. Fearing that Tsvangirai’s mobilizing of mass demonstrations might overwhelm him, Mugabe decided to act ruthlessly against the demonstrators in the hope of intimidating them into submissiveness, but instead it has inflamed international outrage and domestic opinion against him to a potentially fatal degree.

The international community is up in arms. A 45-nation task force, led by Britain and the United States but including other influential nations such as India, has put intense pressure on the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) to take stronger action to end the Zimbabwe catastrophe.

This has resulted in SADC calling a two-day summit, beginning in Dar es Salaam today, which Mugabe will attend. Indications are the summit will tell Mugabe the economic meltdown in his country - where inflation is now running at 1,700% and retailers are changing prices two or three times a day - is hurting the whole region, that the influx of refugees has reached unacceptable levels, and that he must allow a change of leadership to take place so that an economic recovery programme devised by the international task force can be introduced.

At the same time Mugabe faces incipient rebellion within his own ruling party, where senior party members and even Cabinet Ministers are feeling the effects of the economic meltdown. The security forces, too, are becoming restless, with significant numbers of troops having been sent home to rural areas because the army cannot afford to pay them. Mugabe has tried to placate senior officers with hefty pay increases, but these, too, have quickly been negated by the burgeoning inflation rate.

Two rival camps have emerged within ZANU-PF, one led by the former Chief of the Defence Force, Solomon Mujuru, whose wife, Joyce Mujuru, is Vice-President, and the other by former Intelligence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa. Both want Mugabe to go, but they are in conflict over who should succeed him. There is also a body of party elders stubbornly loyal to Mugabe.

Of these, the Mujuru camp appears to be the strongest. Solomon Mujuru is regarded as the godfather of the military and still has considerable influence over the top generals.

Solomon Mujuru has also been in secret contact with Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the largest of the two factions of the divided Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Some analysts in Zimbabwe believe the two have formed a secret pact. If so, it would be a formidable alliance on two levels.

Firstly, the pair represent the two largest clans of Zimbabwe's dominant Shona ethnic group, which is ZANU-PF’s power base -- Tsvangirai being a Karanga, the biggest clan, and Mujuru a Zezuru, the second largest. Secondly, while Tsvangirai could deliver the international community, essential for any recovery programme, Mujuru could deliver much of the military, essential for maintaining security.

The recent meeting between Joyce Mujuru and South Africa's Deputy President, Phumzile Mhlambo-Ngcuka, also indicates that Pretoria may be supportive of the Mujuru camp - although President Mbeki has personal ties to Mnangagwa, whom he invited to the ANC's last national conference in Stellenbosch.

But whatever the rivalries between the two camps, they are united in wanting Mugabe to go. This may reveal itself at the first of two critical ZANU-PF meetings today when the party’s Politburo, the inner circle of its supremos, meets in Harare while Mugabe himself is in Dar es Salaam. The succession issue is bound to be discussed.

This will be followed by a meeting of the larger Central Committee on Friday, which Mugabe will attend on his return from the SADC summit, and where it is expected he will be confronted with a demand that he should not be the party candidate in March 2008.

How the vote will go on Friday remains uncertain, but I will venture a prediction. Unless Mugabe wins at least 60% support on Friday, he can be considered doomed. Never before has he been opposed within his own party. If the phalanx of unanimous support is broken for the first time in 27 years, you can take it that the endgame is unfolding - as I believe it already is.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP