Politics of power to politics of ideology

The ongoing presidential elections in the United States of America raise many important lessons for fledgling democracies around the world – especially in Africa. Of course one must appreciate and accept that the American experience in democratic process goes back some centuries unlike in much of Africa where it goes back only a few decades. If one discounts the many years wasted under military and civilian dictatorships, that experience is whittled even further down to not more than a dozen years in the best of circumstances.

That lack of experience should, however, not be an excuse for the sorry state the continent finds itself neither should it be justification for continued repression and the many undemocratic travesties perpetrated against the poor people on the continent. The whole point of history is to learn from the past in order to avoid similar pitfalls and to help make better decisions for the future. In Africa it seems quite in vogue to disregard past lessons and repeat the errors from history with the mistaken and misguided expectation that the results could be different. It is time our leaders and our people started learning the lessons from other countries’ experiences.

The first lesson for me is that politics is not just about power (raw and unbridled) but it is really and mostly about ideology. The contest between Senator McCain and Senator Obama is, at its centre, a contest of ideology – conservatism or liberalism as defined by their political parties – the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. With all his charisma and eloquence, Obama would not have progressed very far if he did not subscribe to or support the Democratic Party ideology and policies. With all his war heroism and extensive political experience, McCain would be nowhere if he was outside the umbrella of the Republican ideological framework.

While both candidates have trumpeted their bi-partisan inclinations they have been very careful not to alienate themselves from the core values and principles of their parties. In fact the candidates have had to temper their more extreme inclinations and preferences to retain their core supporters. In Africa, politics is about power and success usually accrues to the one who holds the best levers – those who control the strongest or most vicious militia, those who have the most money to buy supporters and the ruling incumbents who are able to manipulate the electoral processes in their favour. There is thus a sense of disbelief if, after leveraging all such advantages, some candidates still lose elections and refuse to concede to the victors.

The issue of ideology will also help to limit the number of parties that contest elections – or at the very least limit the number of real competitive parties. In my view, one of the problems faced in African politics is that there are too many contenders for political positions and this provides the electorates with too many options much of which are not really different. In the circumstances, the prospects of making wrong choices multiply quite significantly. Under the western democratic systems, there are few parties in contention and this enables voters to make considered and informed decisions on whom they wish to elect.


Another thing that strikes me as highly admirable about the US elections is the degree of civility with which the contestants deal with each other. I struggle to appreciate the complaints being traded between the presidential contestants about negative campaigning. Much of what I have heard is pretty mild if not downright polite when compared with the viciousness with which elections are conducted in Africa. While personal insults are traded in abundance, it’s the naked intimidation and physical violence that is the central modus operandi of African politicians. The use of state security agencies by the incumbent government is very common while there is also rampant use of private militia and vigilantes to advance one’s political goals.

The violence is systematic and those who engage in it do so with a degree of impunity as the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary have been compromised. So when people go and vote, they are likely to make their choices out of fear of the possible repercussions and usually out of self-preservation motives. One outgoing president famously remarked in a recent election in an African country “This election is a do or die affair”. Such statements provide the licence to the brutality and deviousness with which elections are conducted.

An unfortunate outcome of this kind of approach to electioneering is that the loss of political power usually heralds the end of the road for the loosing party. The successor party will employ the very same methods to entrench themselves in power until some other party emerges to dethrone them. And so it goes on and on. If loosing parties, especially ruling parties, had realistic options of coming back into power in future they would be less inclined to resist election results which are not in their favour. In the UK, for example, after many years of Conservative rule under Mrs Thatcher and Mr Major, the Conservatives lost the 1997 elections to the Labour Party. After more than ten years in power the Conservatives look like they are on their way back, if recent polls and results from local government lections are accurate indicators. In the US, the Democrats have a more than fair chance of winning against the Republicans who have been ruling for eight eventful years.

There may be some gamesmanship and a certain level of rhetorical viciousness in the election campaigns between the competing candidates and their parties in the US but there is no “do or die” nonsense characteristic of elections in Africa. As I see it, in Africa politicians have a serious disrespect of the electorate. They do not accept or recognise that the citizens can and should exercise their own free will in deciding whom they want to rule over them. Our politicians believe that they can cheat, coerce, bribe and lie to get into power. With very few exceptions, no one takes notice of these shenanigans and life goes on. One irregular election is followed by another irregular election and by another – all with unfailing regularity.

While this entire tussle for power is going on, the continent is regressing. The level of poverty on the continent is escalating, social services are collapsing, economic development has stagnated and corruption is running rampart. To tackle these evils will demand a real paradigm shift in the manner in which the business of politics is transacted in Africa. There should be a migration from the politics of power to the politics of ideology.

The global economic crises – Lessons from Zimbabwe

The global financial markets are in turmoil and the world is facing an economic meltdown of an unprecedented magnitude. The governments have stepped in to introduce a raft of measures to stabilise the situation and restore confidence in the markets. The responses have been as varied as they have been controversial – from bailout packages in the US, UK and Europe to guarantees of depositor funds in Ireland, Greece and Australia. These interventions notwithstanding, the outcomes, for the moment at least, have been disappointing. The markets are plummeting and institutions are failing at an alarming rate.

But if the truth should be told, the current events are not new and have been playing out in a small corner of the globe on which attention has been on entirely other matters. In the past few years I have been conducting a doctorate research on corporate governance in Africa with particular focus on Zimbabwe and Kenya. In Zimbabwe I conducted a case study research on the financial sector which collapsed due to corporate governance failures. Reflecting back on this research, the findings reflect astonishingly closely what is now happening in the global economy and I thought I should share some of these findings and conclusions in the hope that this will be useful in understanding what has happened and in shaping a way forward.

While my case study research focused on one particular institution the issues concerned the whole financial sector in Zimbabwe and, by extension, to the national economic performance of the country. Let me start with an obvious and necessary admission. Zimbabwe may not be such a good example given other well known exogenous factors. However the situation was not always like that. Until a few years ago Zimbabwe was a reasonably performing economy with world-class financial institutions and efficient public and private sectors. What led to its slide into its current economic abyss are, in part, events which are very similar to what is now happening on the global arena.

The most telling and decisive slide of the Zimbabwean economy can be traced to 2004 when many financial institutions in the country which had tied up funds in speculative activities began to experience liquidity constraints accelerating runs on the banks by agitated depositors and, in turn, triggering the banking sector crisis. At the height of the crisis in 2004, ten financial institutions including banks and building societies, collapsed due to insolvency and liquidity problems. This mirrors the present situation where global financial institutions are suffering the effects of their exposure to the sub-prime mortgage market amid growing accusations of malfeasance by the so-called corporate fat cats.

In my research I found that prevailing economic environment largely dictates the nature of business practices and transactions. In the case of Zimbabwe, it was the unstable macro-economic environment (soaring inflation and high interest rates) which encouraged financial institutions to engage in high risk investments which provided very high near-term benefits. The long term implications turned out to be quite adverse, as the financial institutions later painfully learnt.

What is important to remember is that financial institutions are cash rich but a greater proportion of that cash is constituted of depositors’ and equity funds. Operating margins (mostly interest and changes) represents a smaller component of their funds. In a business world which avers that “cash is king”, financial institutions find themselves in a unique position of trying to play around with a large amount of funds which they have not really earned. While there are regulations which guide their activities in this regard, there is, nevertheless, a great deal of flexibility and discretion. Today’s top performers are those institutions and individuals which are adept at executing the most unusual and highly profitable financial deals. This has given rise to the widespread use of instruments such as special purpose vehicles to conduct structured financial deals.

The prevailing level of discretion may suggest the need for stronger regulation and supervision of financial institutions. Evidence from my research suggests that regulatory interventions are not always the right answer. In Zimbabwe, for example, the regulatory authority, the Reserve Bank, responded to the banking crisis by issuing a raft of control and supervisory measures many of which failed to address the problems. In the end the central bank was criticised for lacking due consideration of the risk of regulatory failure with the consequence that where failure had occurred, regulatory measures had worse effect or consequences than the failings and potential dangers they sought to address.

There is also a need to strike a balance between regulation and supervision (which are socialistic in nature) and allowing for entrepreneurship and enterprise which form the bedrock of capitalism. An effective regulatory framework should ensure that business organisations are fully aware of what they can or cannot do and the consequences of departing from the straight and narrow path. In this context regulation is not seen as an external influence but more as an enabler, bearing in mind that the existence of regulation does not, on its own, enforce compliance in much the same way as the existence of criminal law does not stop criminals from committing crime. Good regulation therefore functions as a benchmark for accepted behaviour.

In the Zimbabwean banking crisis the issue of poor corporate governance relating, especially, to executive decision making and executive remuneration seems to have played a significant role in the events which unfolded. Another important issue was that the managers of the financial institutions were also significant shareholders. I will argue here that the prevailing practice in global corporations of partly remunerating executives with stock options makes them owner-managers. Evidence from my research suggests that owner-managed institutions tend to engage in higher risk behaviour to achieve higher stock returns from which the managers directly benefit. Owner-management undermines the foundations of the “principal-agent” model which has stronger prudential properties and promotes the high risk “myopic-market” (or “short-termistic”) tendencies in executive behaviour.

It must be conceded however that executive remuneration is largely defined and dictated by prevailing market conditions. The excessive compensation packages offered to financial executives may be a reflection of efforts to attract and retain competent skills within a constricted market. In this regard, it may not be entirely reasonable to fault financial institutions for the generous compensation packages which they offer their executives. Rather, efforts must be made to increase investments in training and human resources development in order to increase supply of skills and reduce demand levels. In parallel, it is necessary to devise and adopt alternative remuneration practices which do not involve stock options. Consideration should also be given to introducing executive remuneration caps in order to reduce or limit the growing remuneration gap between low and top earners.

When the liquidity crisis first hit the market in Zimbabwe in late 2003, the Reserve Bank established a Troubled Bank Fund as a temporary measure to support banking institutions which were experiencing liquidity constraints. The fund was intended to assist the troubled banks to re-align their asset portfolios and strengthen their balance sheets. When these efforts failed to successfully resolve liquidity problems, a further step was taken to acquire the failed banks to help avoid a severe loss of depositors’ and creditors’ funds and more serious destabilisation of the financial markets. If anything is to be learnt from this experience, it is that the governments in the US and Europe which are rushing in to shore up their sinking banking institutions will realise, much sooner rather than later, that they are faced with some real tough choices.

When governments decide to bail out financial institutions they may very well help to save depositors and creditors funds. However this invariably means that investors will loose out because of the dilution of their stocks. This undermines investor confidence and entrepreneurship and has adverse effects on long term economic growth. This appears to be what is happening with the financial stocks on the global markets.

Zimbabwe may now be better known for the notoriety of its political and humanitarian situation, but a deeper analysis of the financial crisis which it experienced four years ago and which accelerated the descent into its current economic abyss may provide useful insights and lessons for how the world should be responding to the current global financial crisis. In the event, that small wretched country may, after all, become a force for good. What a forlorn hope!

Deadlock – what deadlock?

The signing of the power sharing agreement in Zimbabwe which was conducted with much fanfare and trumpeting more than three weeks ago seems to have been in vein as there has been no change on the ground since the event. If anything, the situation has deteriorated quite dramatically with the economy, officially at 230 million percent inflation, now virtually collapsed and millions of citizens facing imminent hunger.

In the circumstances one would well be justified to express pessimism with the future of the country. However I choose to be optimistic and see this is the necessary pain before true relief is visited to the long suffering people of Zimbabwe. I do not see the present situation as a deadlock; rather it is a delay to the inevitable surrender of power by Zanu-PF and Robert Mugabe. The agreement which Mugabe signed, notwithstanding its imperfections, has only one implication to him and that is the loosening and eventual total loss of power. He realises it and will try as best as he can to wiggle out but there is no way out for him. The gates are now solidly shut.

What Mugabe is doing by refusing to agree on the distribution of government ministries is simply delaying the inevitable. It is like trying to hold back a ragging river with a shovel. Let me explain further. The reason Mugabe went into the negotiation in the first place was his realisation that the status quo was doomed and could not hold for much longer. He had been rejected and “humiliated” (his words, not mine) by his people in the March 29 election and five weeks of fiddling with results had failed to sanitise the humiliation. He had not fared much better in his second attempt in June when the outcome was universally condemned even by his erstwhile comrades in the African Union.

The only way out for him was to negotiate to either be accommodated in the new power vortex and/ or to secure legitimacy to his obviously illegitimate rule. That position has not changed and will not change if the power sharing agreement fails. He needs this agreement to work as much as a junkie needs a fix. He also knows that the agreement is a very good deal for him and nothing substantially better is likely to come his way in a new round of negotiation.

The consensus out there is that the opposition compromised a lot and, with that experience, they are very unlikely to be more accommodating in future negotiations. They accepted to retain him and his deputies in the presidency and offered him amnesty against prosecution for his many human rights abuses. That is precisely why the opposition have not given in on the issue of sharing of the cabinet seats. They have already done all the giving in and are under no obligation whatsoever to continue to appease the ungrateful dictator.

But Mugabe is playing a dangerous brinksmanship game with them. He is hoping that somehow the opposition will blink and accept a junior role in government thus effectively leaving him in control. His generals and his party are cheering and urging him on but every one of them knows that this is not going to happen. It must be remembered that this whole issue is not about Zanu-PF or about the army generals not wanting to salute anyone other than Mugabe. They are all irrelevant and side issues. The real issue is about Mugabe and, more precisely, stripping him of power and showing him the door.

And that happened on September 15 when Mugabe signed the power sharing agreement in which he, among other things, committed to sharing governing authority with the opposition. Unhappy as they may be with the deal, the generals and Zanu-PF can do absolutely nothing to change the new dynamic. That brings me to the issue of the distribution of cabinet posts. There are four posts which the opposition should insist on controlling. The first is the ministry of finance. The adage that he who holds the purse strings calls the tune has never been truer than in the case which Zimbabwe faces and will confront in the new dispensation. Mugabe and Zanu-PF have destroyed the economy of the country and it will be sheer madness to allow them to continue holding the safe keys.

The second is the ministry of home affairs which controls the police. Everyone knows that under Mugabe the police failed miserably in discharging their duty of protecting the people of Zimbabwe and, if anything, engaged in brutal repression and human rights abuses. There is a crying need to speedily reform the police force in order to protect any gains of freedom which will be ushered by the new dispensation. Without control of the police by the opposition, Zanu-PF will continue to use the force to protect its criminal elements. Another and perhaps more subtle reason for the opposition to control home affairs is to allow the prime minister to be issued with his passport which he has been denied for many months – home affairs controls the office of the registrar general which is responsible for issuing passports.

The third is the ministry of information. There is no doubt that Mugabe’s hold on power has been prolonged by his iron grip on the levers of information. Opening up of the airwaves and unfettered freedom of expression are absolute sine qua non for success of the new dispensation. The press should be unshackled to allow it to both report fairly and accurately on what is happening in the country and, even more importantly, to investigate and expose any undesirable elements and activities. A free press will be the real guarantor of the people’s hard won rights.

The forth but by no means the last ministry which the opposition should control is that of justice. Mugabe and Zanu-PF have become synonymous with miscarriage of justice and selective application of justice. The judiciary has been severely undermined and compromised and requires urgent and concerted rehabilitation. There is need for a new justice system which is truly independent and does not pander to the whims of the executive and the ruling elite. The judiciary should once again be seen as the ultimate protectors of civil liberties and as impartial adjudicators, not as defenders of an unacceptable status quo as is the case at the moment. Zanu-PF cannot and should not be entrusted with this onerous responsibility.

There should really be no negotiation about the rest of the ministries. These can be tossed into a hat and drawn to each of the participating parties. Once this is done, the new cabinet should be sworn in and commissioned to proceed with speed to do what they are supposed to do – get the country back on its feet and relieve the suffering of the Zimbabwean people. The people have waited far too long for this to happen. They should not be asked to wait any longer.

A president who will not be missed

“Good riddance of bad rubbish” is, I suspect, how a lot Zimbabweans will greet the news that President Thabo Mbeki has been given the sack from the presidency by his party the ANC of South Africa. To say that this is the best piece of news I have heard for a long while is, perhaps, a serious understatement. Of course I was aware that President Mbeki had not endeared himself to many of his compatriots and to the generality of the suffering masses in his country’s neighbourhood.

The signs have not been good for him for quite a while. President Mbeki famously denied that HIV caused AIDS and denied or blocked government action to relieve the suffering of many of his people who were afflicted by the deadly disease. Only in the face of overwhelming global pressure and mounting evidence of the deadly carnage that the disease was wrecking in the country, did Mbeki relent and allow unhindered implementation of AIDS prevention and treatment programmes. But the damage had been done to his credibility and sense of judgement.

Mr Mbeki also launched a crusade to weaken, sideline and punish those he considered as threatening his leadership position. Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramaphosa were early victims and Jacob Zuma had been a target for a long period. Ironically, it is his relentless pursuit of Zuma which has driven Mbeki to his Waterloo before his term as president of the South African Republic had expired. The writing was on the wall when Mbeki dismally lost to Zuma in his attempt to extend his tenure as president of the ruling party by another term. And when he was fingered by the judiciary as having interfered in the prosecution of his nemesis, the game was well and truly up. There was only one way out for him – to drink the cup of poison.

However it is for his role in Zimbabwe that Mbeki will forever be remembered by many people around the world. For eight long years, President Mbeki has worked hard to prop and protect the discredited, increasingly unpopular and brutish neighbour in the north, Robert Mugabe. Of course the support has not been overt and tacit - even a man of his immense power and influence could not openly condone the excesses of his neighbour. But his so called “quite diplomacy” had, to many impartial observers, become a euphemism for protectionism of the abhorrent Mugabe regime.

For eight long years, and perhaps more, President Mbeki watched as Mugabe, in a fit of madness, reduced what was one of the strongest economies in Africa into a complete basket case of poor and hungry masses. He watched or, more accurately perhaps, turned his eyes away as millions of Zimbabwean flooded across the borders to escape political repression and poverty in their home state. He watched and acquiesced as Mugabe stole repeated elections through naked violence and blatant rigging. When his observers and advisors reported on the malfeasance of his neighbour, he ignored or suppressed their reports.

For a long eight years, President Mbeki positioned himself as the mediator of the conflict in Zimbabwe vowing that he would end the unfolding tragedy while he supped with the devil, clasped hands with him and declared to the incredulous and bewildered world that “there is no crisis in Zimbabwe”. With such comforting support, Mugabe was allowed to freely proceed and do what he knows best – inflicting untold pain and suffering on his people.

Many are celebrating the recently concluded talks on a government of national unity in Zimbabwe as a triumph of Mbeki’s consummate diplomacy skills. But even more people will beg to differ and the verdicts have already starting coming in. The agreement has, at best, been received with universal scepticism and, at worst, with outright rejection by many important stakeholders. Even before the ink on the agreement was dry, his long-term beneficiary, Robert Mugabe, was complaining loudly and bitterly to the entire world that he was unhappy with the agreement because the opposition “demanded more than they deserved”.

As I write this article, there is a reported deadlock on the sharing of cabinet positions because Zanu-PF is reneging on earlier understandings and demanding a control of all the strategic ministries while relegating the opposition to second-tier and less strategic portfolios. The signs are not good for the future of the agreement as long as Mr Mugabe remains in any sort of control. Mugabe has been and continues to be the albatross around Zimbabwe’s neck. That is the cardinal fundamental that Mbeki never got to understand or accept through the long eight years of his so-called facilitation.

The departure of Mr Mbeki, deserved and welcome as it is, will be very good news for the oppressed people of Zimbabwe in particular and the African democratic movement in general. It is good news because Mugabe will realise all too quickly that he has lost his protector and has to settle for what he has got now. Mugabe’s hand will now be forced to make this deal work otherwise he will be forced into another election which he will dismally loose. Mugabe is no fool and he should realise that any attempt by him to jettison the unity agreement will have far less attractive consequences for him because the successor regime in South Africa is likely to be far less accommodating to his dictatorial excesses and his waywardness.

For the democratic movement generally, the fall of a powerful political personality like Mbeki was again confirm the time proven tenet of democracy that no leader is mightier than the people he leads. The problem we have had in Zimbabwe (and indeed in other countries under dictatorship) is that Mugabe had grown to believe, rightly or wrongly, that he was bigger than the people of Zimbabwe. That is why he does not respect their intelligence (as attested by his continual attribution of his unpopularity to the British and American interference) nor care for their suffering.

The jettisoning of Mbeki by his party is also a good lesson to Zanu-PF on what it should have done to Mugabe at least twenty years ago when it became all too apparent that he was leading the country astray. There have been many opportunities for Zanu-PF to tell Mugabe to go but there has been very few if any who have launched a serious leadership challenge to Mugabe. Joshua Nkomo did in the early years of independence and he was mercilessly crushed, Edgar Tekere tried in the late eighties and he was buried. More recently Simba Makoni threw his hat into the ring but his motives were as questionable as his efforts were feeble.

The greater tragedy has been that for every single voice of dissent a dozen sycophantic voices have emerged to praise and fawn on Mugabe’s leadership greatness. And the tragic effect of the failure to unseat Mugabe is now all too plain to see - except perhaps by the outgoing President Mbeki who saw no evil and heard no evil in Mr Robert Mugabe. Mr Mbeki will not be missed by the people of Zimbabwe.

A minefield of a political settlement in Zimbabwe

Make no mistake about it, the just concluded political settlement in Zimbabwe is a very bad deal indeed. It is quite obvious that not many people are happy with the agreement and there are good reasons for that. The newly anointed Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, will feel that the deal does not give adequate recognition to his success in the much fairer and free March 29, 2008 elections. President Robert Mugabe has already expressed strong reservations about the agreement.

Many supporters of both the MDC and ZANU-PF feel that their leaders “sold out” to achieve the agreement. The international community is generally sceptical that the agreement will be successfully implemented and are withholding support until they see evidence of progress on the ground. I do suspect that even President Thabo Mbeki, the chief architect of the agreement, is privately ashamed of his shoddy handiwork though, in public, he claims that this was the best solution – “an African solution to an African problem” whatever that means!

Be that as it may, the deal provides some hope of sorts that there is light at the end of the tunnel. My own view is that the agreement is a very positive development for three reasons: Firstly, the deal has for the first time in 28 years loosened Mugabe’s stranglehold on power in Zimbabwe. In spite of his fatuous claims that he remains in “the driving seat”, Mugabe knows that he has been compromised and lost a great deal of the powers he once held. Otherwise why would he be trying so hard to sabotage the agreement if he remained truly in charge? The degree of "loosening" may be debatable but the mere fact that Mugabe has agreed to share power represents a significant shift in the power dynamics in Zimbabwe.

Secondly and, again, for the first time since independence in 1980, the opposition now have a significant say in the governing of the country. Although the degree of "say" may be debatable, the MDC are in a position to begin dismantling some of the more oppressive and obnoxious structures, systems and legislation - access to information, security and public order, etc. Zanu-PF will work very hard to sabotage or block any reform efforts but they will not be allowed to succeed. And I suspect they will not allow themselves to succeed. They know that they have got out of this deal much more than they deserved and they will not fare better in a new round of negotiations – especially with Mbeki’s tenure in South Africa under imminent threat.

Third, the deal provides the last possible chance for providing an honourable exit to Mugabe. I do not think Mugabe has any doubt (neither has his party, for that matter) that the game is over and their time is up. They know that they remain in shared power only because of the courtesy of President Mbeki and other African leaders who allowed that he should not be humiliated out of office but should, instead, be given a soft landing. Mbeki and his motley crew of African leaders will not be amused if Mugabe double-crosses them. There are watching him closely and will not let him wriggle out of the deal. And when the next elections come (be it in two years or five) Mugabe and ZANU-PF will be put to the sword by the voters.

Having made a case of some sort in favour of this very fractured agreement, it is my view that there are three potential deadly hazards or minefields that must be negotiated by the parties if any meaningful or useful results are to be expected from this engagement. The first is the distribution of the cabinet positions. One of the major weaknesses of the agreement which has been made public so far is that it does not specify how the cabinet positions are to be allocated. I do suspect that this would have been discussed and agreed at the negotiating table but the fact that it was not committed into the actual agreement document suggests that there could be some back-tracking and shifts from agreed positions. If that is the case, Mr Mbeki should be expected back in Harare on the double before his smouldering agreement goes up in flames. There has been a lot of speculation as to which ministries have been allocated to which party and I do not wish to add to this speculation

My expectation however is that the MDC will be given some key and strategic ministries which will lend credibility to the power sharing arrangements and strengthen their hand in the difficult process of turning the economy around. It must be remembered that apart from the fact that they actually won the March general elections, what the MDC brings to the table is their claim to the key to unlock international aid and investment which will be critical in bailing out Zimbabwe from its economic doldrums. However such external support will not be forthcoming unless Tsvangirai is given real power and seen to be in a position and making an effort to change things around. Therefore I see the fair and equitable distribution of cabinet sits as critical to the success of the agreement. Anything else is, potentially, a deal breaker.

The second minefield is the land issue. The terms of the agreement suggest that Mugabe’s chaotic land reforms are irreversible. I am not quite sure what this means but to me this is the most reversible of the issues otherwise there will be no progress whatsoever in improving the lot of the people. I believe that redistribution of land to the landless and the poor is absolutely necessary and I fully agree that the British government should be persuaded to compensate the farmers whose land has been acquired for this purpose as per the terms of the Lancaster House agreement. But it is common knowledge that much of the farms that were taken in the last eight years were given to undeserving government ministers, senior civil servants, top brass of the security agencies and Zanu-PF apparatchiks.

It is absolutely silly and sheer madness to suggest and to expect the British government (and any government for that matter) to pay compensation for lands which are in the hands of such self-serving individuals. In my view the issue of land should be guided by one principle or consideration – effective utilisation of the land for food production and economic development of the country. I believe that many of the farms were too big and this resulted in large tracts of unutilised or underutilised land. Such farms should be subdivided and shared with the landless poor. Others who have the means, capacity and capability should be assisted to acquire their own lands which they can farm. The undeserving apparatchiks should be kicked off the lands which they have forcibly and illegally acquired.

The third minefield that is likely to blow up the agreement is the issue of amnesty for the perpetrators of human rights abuses during the Mugabe era. Whilst the agreement is not prescriptive of the action to be taken in connection with political violence and human rights abuses, the new Prime Minister has indicated that perpetrators will be brought to book. This is a most welcome commitment because, in my view, the physical pain and destruction of life and property that have been perpetrated in the name of Zanu-PF are unpardonable. But the big question is whether Mugabe and Zanu-PF will allow their acolytes to be punished.

These and other challenges and uncertainties remain lurking in the shadows and may trip the deal at any time. And quite obviously, the deal itself is not perfect. But it reminds me that the Lancaster agreement which brought in Mugabe was, in my view, only (or mostly) made possible by the internal settlement of a year or so previously in which Ian Smith agreed to relinquish his power to Bishop Muzorewa. I have always had my doubts whether the Lancaster agreement would have succeeded at the time it did were it not because they were negotiating with Muzorewa rather than the more belligerent and tougher Smith.

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.