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Mugabe: Hostility from all sides
William Gumede
April 25, 2007

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=305809&area=/supzim0407_home/supzim0407_content/

President Robert Mugabe stepped out of the Zanu-PF politburo meeting on March 30 with a triumphant look, defiantly waving his clenched fist in the air. He had secured his position as the ruling party's 2008 presidential candidate.

But his triumph was a facade, hiding the reality of a party on the verge of implosion. Mugabe is not a man at the summit of his power.

In fact, the longer Mugabe holds tight-fistedly on to the helm, the more crippling the succession struggle within Zanu-PF and the more terrifying the country's plunge into chaos and bloodshed.

The most crucial moment for any African and developing country's liberation movement is the transition from the immediate post-liberation leader to a new one.

From past evidence, the longer the leader overstays in office, the fiercer the battle for succession and the bigger the chance of a fragmentation of the party -- or its total collapse.

Similarly, the more centralised power, patronage and control the leader has exercised, the more destructive the forces when the holder of all that power finally leaves.

So tight has Mugabe's hold on Zanu-PF been that it will be very difficult -- although not altogether impossible -- for the centre to hold when he goes.

It is even more difficult when there is no clear successor to unite the party -- as is the case now in Zanu-PF. Just like many other liberation leaders, Mugabe had made sure he appointed weak deputies.

For a long time now, the glue that has held the Zanu-PF leadership together has been the wealth that comes from governing an agriculturally and commodity-rich country. The crumbling economy, however, means that this is diminishing. Mugabe's rhetorical flashes against colonialism, imperialism and neo-liberalism masked a liberation movement that has long sold out to the good ideals of providing a better life for its people. It is a better life for its leaders now.

A breakdown of Zanu-PF into separate entities is quite possible. There are at least two main Zanu-PF factions, both former die-hard supporters of Mugabe. The Mujuru group is rallied around [Vice-President] Joyce Mujuru and her husband, while the hard-line group exists around Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe's former confidant.

There are also separate and less organised moderate groups centred on current Central Bank Governor Gideon Gono and former finance minister Simba Makoni.

Mugabe was humiliated at the March meeting. He demanded to stay on until 2010, when he wanted to have the elections and handpick his successor. But he was rebuffed and forced to accept that he will have to step down.

Some of Mugabe's most fierce opponents within Zanu-PF were worried that if they had pushed Mugabe out immediately, it would have appeared that they were succumbing to Western demands.

This is apart from their anxiety that a power vacuum would be created because they could not agree on a successor.

SADC leaders have also finally taken a stand and told Mugabe that he is a threat to the subcontinent's economic growth and political stability; that he should leave office and that he must negotiate with the opposition.

Insiders at the SADC meeting say Mugabe has confirmed to regional leaders that he will leave "soon" after the 2008 elections. He gave no date, however. He apparently told SADC leaders he needed to ensure a smooth transition both within Zanu-PF as well as the country.

Zanu-PF's politburo -- the powerful organ in charge of party affairs between national conferences, which has hitherto been packed, dominated and manipulated by his supporters -- is now hostile towards him.

In February, Mugabe unsuccessfully tried to regain control of his Cabinet by reshuffling it and promoting key supporters to influential positions.

The security forces so crucial to Mugabe's long reign now see his leadership as a danger to their economic interests. In January, Mugabe sent a memo to senior police commanders, threatening to discipline them if they rebel, as they had threatened to do.

In a secret briefing to the Zanu-PF leadership, Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation, which is notoriously loyal to Mugabe, told them that extending his term of office beyond next year would destabilise both Zanu-PF and the country and could lead to the loss of a large number of supporters and voters.

Even the party's old guard, its so-called "elders", is rebelling. For example, Enos Nkala and Edgar Tekere, surviving founding members of Zanu-PF, have denounced Mugabe.

The rebellion against his rule at the December 2006 Zanu-PF conference was engineered mostly from the provinces. The crumbling economy has demoralised even his most blinkered supporters.

For the first time in South Africa, Zimbabwe has become a political issue in the ANC's succession battle: those opposed to Thabo Mbeki are using Mugabe's continued stay in power to ridicule the ANC leader. They say the decline in Zimbabwe is a glaring failure of his Africa policy.

The battle between Mbeki's supporters and his opponents is so fiercely and tightly fought that, going into the ANC's December 2007 national conference, a failure to report progress in Zimbabwe could mean political humiliation for the proponent of the "African renaissance".

William Gumede is research fellow at the Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand. The second edition of his book Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC will be released later this year

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