Talks should only be about getting Mugabe out

I have not been away on holiday nor have I been incapacitated through illness. In fact, I have not been dead! The simple reason why I have not been able to publish this blog in the past two weeks is because I was severely depressed by the scale of betrayal which I feel the people of Zimbabwe have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of their own leaders and leaders of the wider world community. I thought that Sharm El Sheikh was a big enough debacle but I had not reckoned for the failure of the UN Security Council resolution which would have sanctioned Mugabe and his cronies.

That resolution principally failed because of the veto of the Chinese and the Russians which was stocked and abetted by South African opposition to the resolution. However the signing of an agreement on formal talks between Mr Robert Mugabe and leaders of the opposition – Messrs Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara – restored a tiny ray of hope in me. And, in all honesty, it is just that, the tiniest sliver of expectation that something good may be finally emerging from the grotesque absurdity that Zimbabwe has become under the utterly failed stewardship of Mugabe and Zanu-PF.

The simple fact that the parties are in dialogue, after many years of acrimony and antagonism, is a welcome development. But whether anything meaningful and acceptable will emerge from this process is the million dollar question. My own belief is that these talks are not premised on any sincerity or honest desire to achieve a change which will improve the lot of our people. Each of the parties brings to the negotiating table significant burdens which the other might wish to exploit to their advantage or which they will find too daunting to share.

Let me start with Mugabe and his Zanu-PF. This man and his party have been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the majority of the Zimbabweans who voted against them in March 29 elections. Not to mention in the eyes of the international community who have universally condemned Mugabe’s brazen attempt to subvert the will of his people. When they realised that they had lost the elections they embarked on an orgy of violence, retribution and intimidation of the Zimbabwean people in order to achieve a win in the run-off elections which they had engineered. The results of the run-off elections were widely condemned by the world community consigning Mr Mugabe to the dustbin of illegitimacy. This illegitimacy is the burden which Mugabe is bringing to the table with the hope that any agreement reached will launder it to legitimacy.

In engaging in the negotiations with Zanu-PF, the MDC must have a clear strategic position on whether they are going to allow themselves to be used to launder Mugabe’s dirty linen or not. In my view, the MDC should never allow themselves to be used in this way. The Zanu-PF linen is so dirty that anyone who touches it takes the very real risk of contracting the dirtiness themselves. In my view, the MDC should only focus on achieving a transfer of power that will reflect and respect the will of the Zimbabwean people as expressed at the March 29 election. This means identifying a safe exit for Mugabe and his cronies (their probable visit to the Hague will be an issue for another day but the urgency of now is to get them out of power). The only acceptable compromise to this position is the establishment of a transitional government which will oversee the holding of new and internationally supervised elections in the shortest possible time – say 18 to 24 months.

The MDC also brings to the negotiating table its own burdens. The biggest of them is Tsvangirai’s lack of credibility amongst the generality of the African leadership and the perception that he is a purport of the Western countries. Of course, I know that this is a false image which has been cleverly cultivated by the Zanu-PF propagandists but nevertheless it is perception that holds a lot of credence amongst the Africans. Tsvangirai has not helped his position by his flip-flopping on many fundamental issues in the past. His positions on many issues have continued to shift so much that it has become difficult to anticipate what he will do next. Some will argue that he is only reacting to an agenda which is being set by the Mugabe regime and that this shifting of positions reflects a more flexible and less intransigent approach to important issues.

I don’t buy those arguments. Tsvangirai returned from his short self-imposed exile with a promise to contest the run-off presidential elections even when there was mounting evidence at that stage of widespread and systematic violence against the MDC supporters. The body count was already mounting alarmingly but he vowed that he would not be deterred. And what did he do? He withdrew his candidature at the last minute allowing Mugabe an uncontested run at the presidency. More recently he vowed that he would not sign any negotiating agreement if Zanu-PF did not explicitly stop the violence against his people and if the government did not release the thousands of his supporters who are detained in police custody. But he went on and signed the agreement anyway before any of those demands had been met.

Such flip-flopping and lack of consistency does not reflect well for someone who aspires to the ultimate position of leadership – that of head of state. Zanu-PF is going into the negotiations well aware of these weaknesses and they will seek to exploit them to the fullest extent possible and extract all the concessions that they need. With President Mbeki’s known and unashamed favouritism of Mugabe and the somewhat dubious role of the minority Mutambara faction in the negotiation, Tsvangirai has his work cut out to achieve any meaningful and acceptable agreement. I see two possible outcomes both of which unfortunately will be less than acceptable. The first is that MDC will succumb and will be absorbed by Zanu-PF – that will be the net effect of accepting any junior role. The second possible outcome is that the talks will collapse without agreement.

In either case Zanu-PF will remain in power and the suffering of the masses of Zimbabwe will continue unabated. If that might be the case, what is the point of these negotiations? That is the precisely the question that is vexing me at the moment. In my view there should not have been any negotiations. Zimbabwe is a democratic country and issues of who governs its people are decided by elections. On March 29, the people were asked of their view and they gave their verdict. If indeed Tsvangirai failed to win by the constitutionally required margin (which is doubtful given that it took more than five weeks to reach this simple conclusion), then a fairly held run-off election should have decided that. Mugabe and his lot were not prepared for a fair election and it was plain for all to see. The international community, led by the African leaders, should have told him in no uncertain terms that his time was up instead of waiting for the results of a charade of an election.

Negotiating power sharing deals as Mr Mbeki is forcing the Zimbabwean leaders to do is anathema to democracy. It is an affront to the intelligence of and a disregard of the will of the Zimbabwean people. It sets a dangerous precedent for democratic institutions the world over. It is simply unacceptable. But I will be the first to concede that in the current circumstances that Zimbabwe finds itself in, negotiations have become unavoidable. However the limit and extent of the negotiations should be to establish transitional arrangements for a more acceptable election process in the future. Anything else will be a betrayal of the wishes of the people of Zimbabwe.

The shame of Sharm El Sheikh

One thing you can say about the African Union (AU) and the eminent men and one woman who lead it is that they never disappoint or surprise. Faced with an abundance of evidence that one of their own was acting in blatant and total violation of the charter and principles of the their union, that there was a huge humanitarian crisis will all the hallmarks of genocide unfolding in that member country, that the electoral observers they had mandated to be their witnesses in a just concluded plebiscite had unanimously declared the process as having been neither free nor fair nor reflecting the will of the people, that citizens of the member country were being brutalised, raped murdered in a state sponsored orgy of violence – against all this evidence and much more, they were unable to issue a statement of condemnation and only glibly endorsed a farcical statement supporting the establishment of a government of national unity (GNU).

To call this a spineless and meaningless declaration is to seriously understate the fact. But if due credit can be given; there were dissenting voices against the normal acquiescence that has become the standard bearing of African politics of solidarity. Countries such as Botswana, Nigeria, Liberia and Kenya spoke strongly against the injustices being perpetrated against fellow Africa citizens by a rogue and illegal regime in Zimbabwe. However in the end their voices were drowned out by the silence of the overwhelming majority in that august gathering. The statement that was eventually issued represented a significant compromise and face-saving measure to what has surely become a deeply divisive and emotional issue. I am tempted to condemn and dismiss the AU statement offhand as another example of the failure of African diplomacy. But I have to admit that there are many positives that can be derived from this shameful episode.

The first is that this is the very first time that Zimbabwe has been formally put on the agenda of the AU and elicited an open and spirited discussion amongst the heads of state. Whichever way one looks at it, this is a very significant breakthrough. For the first time ever, Mugabe was able to sit and hear his colleagues criticise him and question his legitimacy. The fact that there was no consensus and that there were divisions is immaterial. The important thing is that the African leaders responded to Mugabe’s dare issued before the meeting that he would like to examine any finger pointed at him to see whether it is clean. A significant number of fingers were pointed at him and many of the fingers were clean – maybe not squeaky clean, but clean all the same. He must have been highly embarrassed to find himself in that invidious position.

The second positive is that the African leadership for the very first time ever condemned the violence that is taking place in Zimbabwe and asked that this be stopped. Even a club dominated by despots and political dinosaurs could not entirely ignore human rights violations being perpetrated by one of their own – the death, destruction, torture, rape and displacement of innocent and unprotected citizens. Some of them may have committed worse atrocities in their own countries but, with few notable exceptions – Sudan being a case in point - never in the glare of the international publicity and universal condemnation. What Mugabe had done was to demonstrate that he did not give a hoot about international public opinion and the ticking-off he got in return was just recompense.

The third positive outcome is that the AU did not give recognition to Mugabe. They may not have branded him as illegitimate and, even more importantly, they may not have endorsed Morgan Tsvangirai who convincingly won the first round of elections on 29 March but by withholding formal recognition of Mugabe’s regime the AU has effectively denied him the legitimacy that he was craving. The AU has previously endorsed fraudulent and irregular election results in Zimbabwe but this time they did not do so and this is very commendable. Mugabe clearly has his back firmly in the corner and the way out for him is increasingly looking tenuous.

His only salvation appears to rest in the government of national unity which is being pushed by the AU on the instigation of President Mbeki. I have my doubts that this GNU will work because, in much the same way as at the time of the run-off elections, the conditions on the ground are not conducive to a successful endeavour. In my view, the concept of GNU is antithesis to democracy and will reflect an unacceptable compromise in Zimbabwe’s circumstances. Democracy is about being governed by elected (or chosen) representatives not by rejected ones or by a mix of the elected and the rejected. When the GNU was proposed for Kenya, I thought it was a bad precedent and stated as much in my blog of sometime back in March.

The issue in Zimbabwe today, as it was in Kenya earlier in the year, is one of unwillingness by the incumbent to accept electoral defeat and concede power to the party or parties which the electorate have freely chosen. It is obvious to anyone with any bit of common sense that Mugabe lost the March election by the requisite margin to avoid a run-off – why else would it have taken more than a month to announce the results, except if it was to massage the numbers to produce the preferred outcome? And all this was done right under the nose of and with the probable collusion of President Mbeki and his SADC crowd. I feel that this whole talk about giving Mugabe a dignified exit is quite misguided and beside the point.

In Kenya Raila Odinga ended up being appointed Prime Minister, a position which he never contested for! And the expectation is now that Morgan Tsvangirai will accept a similar deal in Zimbabwe while Mugabe hangs on to the presidency – albeit a watered down version of the real thing. What a travesty! What impudence! This is the sort of wanton disregard of the people’s wishes which has driven Africa down a land-mined cul-de-sac over the past decades. The real strength of democracy lies in the notion that if you fail to rule properly, you get kicked out and someone else is chosen. The fear of being striped of power is what makes governments work very hard to meet the needs and expectations of their people. Once you remove this threat, democracy loses its meaning.

Admittedly, I may be too idealistic. The world out there is certainly more complex than my simple rationality may suggest. And, yes, the situation in Zimbabwe is now so desperate that any solution will be welcome – even one as faulty and fractured as the GNU. In the circumstances, the honourable gentlemen and lady who deliberated on the solution to Zimbabwe’s problem in Sharm El Sheikh last weekend may not have done a very bad job after all. Only time will tell.