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Talks, dialogue, negotiations and GNU - Post June 2008 "elections" - Index of articles
The
manual for despots
Petina Gappah
July 25, 2008
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-07-26-the-manual-for-despots
Robert Gabriel
Mugabe and Morgan Richard Tsvangirai held
hands. Mugabe tried to lift Tsvangirai's hand above the shoulder,
to join it in his in a triumphant double fist, a gesture reminiscent
of the moment he held up Joshua Nkomo's hand and with that gesture
killed opposition politics in Zimbabwe for a long 12 years.
Tsvangirai may also have
had Joshua Nkomo in mind, at that moment, because he seemed to resist
this, his hand remained just below shoulder level, and Mugabe had
to be content with a sideways shake and a toothy grin. Mugabe grinned.
Tsvangirai grinned. Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara grinned. Thabo
Mvuyelwa Mbeki grinned. They all grinned and were happy together.
It is surreal,
this orgy of grinning, this sudden, blinding flashing of teeth:
barely a month ago the pictures
of torture camps filled television and computer screens, photographs
of burnt bodies illustrated the stories of horror from Zimbabwe.
Seared on the minds of millions were the story of the death of Abigail
Chiroto, killed in an arson attack, and the haunting image of Joshua
Bakacheza, diminished and fragile in his death, just two of the
victims that made the front-page news of just about any newspaper
that gave prominence to Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai was warning the world
about genocide in Zimbabwe. Barely a month later he is sitting down
to talk with the genocidaire-in-chief.
Such is the fluid world
of high politics.
Like Kenya before it,
Zimbabwe is to be another example of a new model of African elections.
Losing an election, it seems, does not actually mean you have to
give up the seat of office. The example of Zimbabwe should be particularly
encouraging to Eduardo Dos Santos in Angola and Paul Biya in Cameroon,
two incumbent leaders whose countries are next on the elections
radar.
This is the lesson of
Zimbabwe: if you are the incumbent and it looks like you are on
your way out, for God's sake do not panic, just hang in there; beat
the living daylights out of some of your people, just because you
can, and the poorer they are the better; imprison those who would
dare to oppose you, torture them, and if they are women, throw in
a little spot of rape; kill them in horrible ways and burn their
bodies and dump them in shallow graves, or no graves, as you please;
in a word, intimidate your way back to power and, bingo, the African
Union will very nicely ask you to accommodate your opponents in
a government of national unity.
"The people of Zimbabwe
have suffered long enough," is the mantra that is being used
to push forward these talks. And indeed, the suffering is beyond
levels that anyone with compassion can accept. Everyone knows the
figures; the hyperinflation, the unemployment rate and now, yet
again, the spectre of creeping starvation -- the United Nations
reports that up to five million people face starvation. But how
far should this mantra be carried?Have the people suffered so much
that non-bread and butter issues to do with the dismantling of oppressive
institutions, accountability, justice and reparations must be sacrificed
on the altar of political expediency?
There is no doubt that,
even if the MDC pushed for these issues to be at the forefront of
the negotiations, Zanu-PF would not welcome any demands for justice,
for truth and reconciliation, even at the very basic level of a
public airing of the atrocities. An insistence on this point may
well mean the end of any talks, any negotiation, any accommodation.
And is it to be expected that Zanu-PF will approve the demilitarisation
of state institutions and thus dismantle the very system that has
ensured its survival?
The result of this negotiation,
when it comes, may well be a political compromise of the kind that
Zimbabwe saw in the 1980s when Joshua Nkomo's Zapu merged with Mugabe's
Zanu-PF after a violent campaign of intimidation. That process of
negotiation left unaddressed the violent suppression of Nkomo's
supporters. The politicians got their Mercs and perks. And to this
day the people of Matebeleland have reason to remain bitter that
nothing was ever done to address their pain.
It is in this regard
that the most disturbing element of these talks is that, as with
the Zanu-Zapu talks, and the Lancaster House talks before them,
they are yet again the exclusive preserve of politicians. If there
is something Zimbabweans should have learned by now, it is that
the fate of the country should not be entrusted to politicians.
This is a political crisis, the thinking goes, and a crisis for
politicians to address. When the MDC wanted the mediation expanded,
it talked only of adding another mediator to watch over Mbeki, who
has given the world reason to believe that he is Mugabe's most able
and hard-working ambassador. The real expansion in the mediation
should have been the inclusion of civil society, because the people
who truly need watching over are not the mediators but the politicians.
The exclusion of civil
society means that matters of justice, however broadly defined,
may never be addressed. Nor will the many economic crimes of this
brutish regime. And there is another dimension: not only redressing
the evils of the past, but also laying a foundation for the future:
one of the items on the agenda of the talks is a new Constitution.
Certainly, this mediation presents an opportunity to jettison the
Lancaster House agreement that was progressively amended to concentrate
power in the hands of the executive, thus giving Zimbabwe the horrors
of 28 years of Mugabe. The negotiators should agree to a new Constitution
but not, as they have attempted to do in the past, come up with
a draft themselves. To leave the process of Constitution-making
to two political parties would be quite wrong.
The absence of civil
society from the talks inevitably means that Zimbabweans, like Kenyans,
will be held hostage to a political compromise. And because the
people have suffered enough, they will have no choice but to accept
what the politicians decide and try to rebuild their lives anew
on a foundation of compromise and cheated dreams. If the MDC sings
the praises of this new deal in dulcet enough tones and Zanu-PF
accompanies with soothing sounds about healings and new visions
and unity of purpose, the money for a rescue package will start
to flow. Inflation will go down.
The politicians will
serve their terms and campaign for new terms. They will make grand
speeches at the opening of Parliament and schools. They will pose
for photographs with visiting dignitaries. Zimbabweans will joke
and laugh about the time inflation was 2 000 000% and they paid
their bills in billions and trillions and the budget was set in
quadrillions.
Joshua Bakacheza and
Abigail Chiroto will fade out of memory; they will certainly not
appear in any history books -- neither they nor the many victims
whose beaten buttocks and burnt bodies served to stoke the flames
and keep the story of Zimbabwe in the limelight. Having served their
purpose, they will leave the limelight, appearing only in the memories
of the people who loved them and in the occasional search on the
internet, where nothing is deleted. And Zimbabwe will go on to a
future rooted in grief and pain, where the accumulated resentments
of the past will be daily reminders of the dangers of political
compromise.
*Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean
writer and lawyer who lives in Geneva. She recently won the Mukuru
Nyaya prize for comic writing.
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