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.