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Mbeki's Zimbabwe challenge
Brian Raftopoulos
June 08, 2007

http://allafrica.com/stories/200706080731.html

THE mediation on Zimbabwe, led by South African President Thabo Mbeki, presents the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) with a narrow window of opportunity to avoid even further deterioration in Zimbabwe's political and economic fortunes.

The initiative, brought about by a combination of growing regional embarrassment over President Robert Mugabe's authoritarian violence and international pressure on the regional organisation, is faced with enormous obstacles in the form of the persistent recalcitrance of decisive elements of the Mugabe regime.

Nevertheless, the mediation does present an opportunity to pry open new political spaces in the country.

March 11 2007 and the months that followed provided new evidence of Zanu PF's growing reliance on violence as a form of rule. The public beating of opposition and civic leaders, rank and file Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) members and high-profile lawyers in the country signalled an escalation of repression against the political and civic opposition in the country.

Faced with a deepening economic crisis, a bitter battle over succession within the ruling party, the persistent presence of opposition forces and continued international pressure, Zanu PF responded to the growing pressures with characteristic contempt.

The demand by Sadc at the end of March that Mugabe enter into a Sadc-led mediation with the opposition is a process that the Zimbabwean leader is thus obliged to engage in if he is to maintain the integrity and support of the region. Developing regional solidarity has been a key element of Mugabe's survival strategy, and therefore his contempt for the opposition can no longer keep him out of such a dialogue.

However, it is certain that Mugabe will make the process as difficult as possible for his South African counterpart.

Already in the period since March 11 we have witnessed the continued arrests, violence, torture and killing of MDC activists on allegations of terrorism. This attempt to deploy the discourse of "terror" against the opposition is an addition to the rhetoric of exclusion that already has pride of place in Zanu PF's nationalist vision. The calumny and language of disdain used against arrested MDC activists provides additional evidence that building a language of tolerance and inclusion in a post-Mugabe era will be a major challenge.

Equally significant is the fact that the recent violence is Mugabe's introductory gambit into the mediation process. Even as Mbeki has tried to provide a conciliatory space for both sides on the political divide, Zimbabwe's ruling party has sought to exacerbate the differences.

In addition we can expect Mugabe to engage in a series of delaying tactics, such as calls for the postponement of the talks, and the setting of unacceptable preconditions. Mugabe is likely to drag out the mediation for as long as possible, even as he prepares for another problematic election in
2008.

The Zimbabwean government has already announced that a general election will take place at the end of March, and the current general assault on the opposition indicates Mugabe's election campaign is already underway.

Thus it appears that Mugabe is once again setting the time-frame and agenda of the mediation process. Given the pressure on the mediator to move the process along as quickly as possible, the central emphasis of the mediation will be on providing the minimum conditions for a "reasonable and acceptable" election to take place in 2008.

Both Mbeki and Mugabe understand that the opposition forces in Zimbabwe have been seriously weakened by a combination of state repression, the split within the MDC and a lack of support within the region.

The MDC is thus unable to provide strong internal pressure as a bargaining strategy in the talks. This places the organisation in an invidious situation, in which its major points of pressure are a reluctant Sadc mediation, pressure from the West and the possibility of a resurgent opposition in the future. The balance of forces in the current context thus weighs heavily against them.

For Mugabe the two major pressures that confront him are the rapidly declining economy and the factional battles in his party. The indicators of decline in Zimbabwe have become a standard global reference for economic failure.

The inflation rate stands at over 3 700%, while by 2006 GDP per capita was 47% below the level in 1980. At the end of 2006 the average minimum wage of Zimbabwean workers was only 16,6% of the poverty datum line calculated at December 2006 levels, while the formal sector decreased from 1,4 million in 1998 to 998 000 in 2004.

When these indicators are combined with anticipated shortages of food this year and the continued loss of high level skills from the country, the picture looks increasingly bleak.

An important part of the factional struggle within the ruling party is about the strategy for "normalisation" that will lead to a new engagement with the international community, and allow the party elite the time and space to consolidate their fast-acquired wealth. It is the terms of this re-engagement that will form the core of the mediation talks, while the future of Mugabe himself will be a major feature of this normalisation.

On this matter, given the intense battles within Zanu PF, Mugabe does not feel that he can hand over the torch to anyone else. It is for this reason that the ruling party structures were manipulated to ensure Mugabe's presidential candidacy for 2008.

For Zanu PF the mediation will thus be about making as few reforms as possible to get acceptance for an election next year, knowing the current state of the opposition.

On the other hand the opposition must face the pressures of growing national and international intolerance of their divisions, and the thought that a failure of the mediation process will present major strategic and organisational dilemmas for the future. They are much more dependent on this mediation to open up new political spaces in the country, in the hope that these will provide new opportunities for strengthening their position.

This is not the best position for the Zimbabwean opposition to be in, but it is the reality that has to be confronted and negotiated. More broadly, it is the dilemma of post-liberation opposition movements that must confront the anti-colonial discourse of authoritarian nationalist governments with a political language that negotiates the tensions between democratic political questions and the pressures of redistributive economic demands.

It may be that in the current regional and global context, diminished economic alternatives will continue to provide the conditions for generating renewed authoritarian nationalisms. However the challenge of developing an alternative, and more tolerant, language of national belonging remains an urgent task.

* Brian Raftopoulos is head of the Transitional Justice in Africa Programme, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, Cape Town.

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