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The agenda
for change, post Sharm-El-Sheikh
By Mutumwa
D. Mawere
(www.mmawere.com)
AS WIDELY expected,
the African Union did not ostracise President Mugabe at the Sharm-El-Sheikh
summit which concluded last week.
Instead, the communiqué issued at the end of the two-day summit called on him and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to enter talks to establish a government of national unity (GNU) and in so doing implicitly confirmed his legitimacy as the head of state.
In calling for the establishment of the GNU after the universally condemned run-off elections, the majority of the AU members had no alternative but to endorse the continuation of President Thabo Mbeki’s mediation efforts -- confirming the position that there is a serious disconnect between the understanding of the West and the AU as to the real causes of the Zimbabwean crisis.
The hunger for social, political and economic change in Zimbabwe is still relevant today as it has been for the last 8 years and it is must now be abundantly clear to even a naïve observer of the unfolding Zimbabwean drama that any expectation that the AU can be a reliable partner in encouraging President Mugabe to accept and respect that the call for change is not only in Zimbabwe’s but the continent’s interest is misplaced.
President Mugabe has been resolute and clear about what he stands for. The AU has implicitly accepted Mugabe’s version that the Zimbabwean crisis has less to do with democracy, justice, corruption, economic mismanagement, and governance but with what he has framed as an outstanding bilateral dispute with the UK government on how the land reform programme should be financed and managed.
At face value, it would seem as if President Mugabe now supports the proposal for the establishment of a GNU but the devil lies really in the details. In fact, he must have convinced the AU that a GNU was attainable and, in any event, the opposition has never been able to speak with one voice on what kind of Zimbabwe they want to see and the role, if any, of Zanu PF in any transitional arrangement.
He must have informed the AU that there was consensus on the need for a new constitution, a signed copy of which no doubt must have been distributed at the summit, and in the circumstances there could be no dispute that the process that led to the March 29 elections must be pursued aggressively.
President Mugabe must have convinced his colleagues that he had no real alternative but to proceed with the 27 June elections as required by Zimbabwean law and he was, therefore, placed with no viable alternative by his opponent who unilaterally decided to pull out of the electoral process for political expediency. On the question of violence, President Mugabe must have made the case that Zanu PF members were also victims but more importantly that the violence was allegedly initiated by MDC particularly its white sponsors who cannot wait to reassert their land rights.
It is significant
that President Mugabe wants Tsvangirai to accept that he is the legitimate
head of state as a starting point to any negotiations and there is nothing
to suggest that President Mbeki does not share the same view.
Whereas Tsvangirai’s starting point is the 29 March elections,
it is not clear how President Mugabe will be persuaded to accept any
other construction that may not serve his interests.
President Mugabe’s calculation that it would be easy for him to intimidate the AU into accepting him as the legitimate head of state irrespective of the means used seems to be paying off. His strategy is to divert attention from the real economic challenges that face Zimbabwe which have resulted in the mass exodus of predominantly black Zimbabweans for whom independence was expected to bring a brighter day.
Zimbabwe is mired in its worst economic crisis with no viable prescription on the radar screen and yet the AU, in a predictable manner, chose to focus on the establishment of a GNU as if to suggest that the outcome of the 29 March elections did not accurately reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people. It must be accepted even by President Mugabe that the post-colonial state in which he has had the privilege of leading has created its own sufferers who must be transformed into builders of a new Zimbabwe.
What Zimbabweans clearly need at this defining hour in the country’s history is a government that they can own and not one that is imposed on them.
No amount of intimidation can force citizens to believe in the country and as such President Mugabe and his colleagues in the AU must know that it is not sufficient to frame the crisis solely in political terms of who has won or lost but to locate the problem in a broader context of what is required to make citizens believe again in the promise of majority rule.
Nation building is a complicated task requiring an investment in financial literacy and regrettably it must be accepted that, in the mind of President Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s brighter day will come not only from assimilating the opposition into a rudderless ship but from the ill conceived notion that the state can promote economic and social progress through nationalisation of productive assets.
The disastrous socialist/communist experiments in many sister developing nations should have taught President Mugabe some valuable lessons about what is required to build progressive and successful nations but he seems not to be alone in Africa in maintaining that imperialism can forever be used as currency for explaining failure.
The Berlin Wall no longer exists because citizens in Europe did in our lifetime come to the inescapable conclusion that sustainable economic progress must necessarily be underpinned by the initiatives of citizens and not the benevolence of the state.
With the AU now having accepted President Mugabe’s version, it must be said that President Mugabe has now conveniently boxed Tsvangirai in the corner where he is at his weakest i.e. at the mercy of the so-called imperialists whose voice is carried on global newswires calling for new targeted sanctions against a seemingly weak government defending its citizens against the domination of its resources by foreigners.
Notwithstanding the facts on the ground that Tsvangirai must enjoy the support of the majority of Zimbabweans, President Mugabe’s investment in fear at the domestic level and intimidation at the continental level has had the undesirable effect of leaving Tsvangirai exposed as a surrogate of the west and positioning Mugabe as a reliable custodian of national sovereignty.
An observation has been made that the only consistent thing about the West’s foreign policy is its inconsistency and President Mugabe has no doubt many examples to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Tsvangirai’s alleged masters on foreign policy issues for him to easily dismiss the allegation that it is through his administration’s policies that Zimbabwe finds itself in the current crisis.
If President Mugabe can use violence to reverse the 29 March electoral verdict then it should be accepted that he is capable of sinking even lower in a bid to remain in power.
The first strategy is obviously to bait Tsvangirai using the tested and tried diplomatic skills of President Mbeki into negotiations that President Mugabe would symbolically prefer to be held at a government building.
President Mbeki has clearly no problem acknowledging President Mugabe as the legitimate head of state and in as much as he would like to be neutral, it cannot be said that the 27 June elections were free and fair allowing him to recognise the outcome there from.
Tsvangirai had no choice but to be unavailable when President Mbeki met President Mugabe last weekend. It was left to the Arthur Mutambara faction of the MDC whom I believe made the point that the starting point had to be the 29 March results and insisted that Tsvangirai was necessary for any credible resolution of the legitimacy and governance crisis facing President Mugabe.
Mugabe is acutely aware that he needs Tsvangirai as much as Tsvangirai is also aware that Mugabe and Zanu PF are in a corner and the Zimbabwean people were not so stupid in deciding to give parliamentary control to the MDC.
There is still a temptation for President Mugabe to reverse the outcome of the 29 March elections through further violence and also using the judiciary but it must be said that this strategy has already been exposed.
History will be the ultimate judge of whether the decision by Tsvangirai to withdraw his name from the run-off elections was a wise one but it must be accepted that conditions for a free and fair elections did not exist and, in any event, President Mugabe had taken the position that the end justified the means. He had already conditioned his party and himself that he had to emerge as the winner at all costs.
President Mugabe has no history of losing an election or accepting that his version of reality does not represent the universe.
Understanding the mind of President Mugabe may be beneficial in better predicting whether the continuation of the Mbeki-led mediation is likely to produce a positive outcome for Zimbabwe.
Rightly or wrongly President Mugabe is not convinced that there is any better Zimbabwean to lead or protect the country than him. He feels strongly that he was democratically elected and the decision by Tsvangirai to withdraw his name from the run-off was principally motivated by the realisation that he was going to lose the elections.
President Mugabe believes that if he were to leave office, white Zimbabwean commercial farmers will reassert their land rights. Furthermore, he is of the view that black economic rights are perishable without the active support of the state led only by him.
The experience, albeit short, from the land reform programme suggests that the mere transfer of asset ownership from white to black hands does not necessarily lead to production gains or efficiency.
What does the country need to go forward? Is a GNU a positive force for change? Who should lead the GNU?
It must be accepted that beyond the conversations on democracy, the crisis facing Zimbabwe is unique and to a large extent a reflection of the impact of bad policies and a deep seated misunderstanding of the role of the state in nation building. It is evident that the crisis will not be remedied without a change of direction in terms of policies.
The absence of serious policy and ideological debates in the post-June 27 elections clearly suggests that the future of Zimbabwe may continue to play hostage to the whims of a few men and women privileged to lead but challenged by the distortion created by the force of Mugabe’s personality on the values and principles that ought to have informed the post colonial state.
Mutumwa Mawere's
weekly column is published on New Zimbabwe.com every Monday. You can
contact him at: mmawere@global.co.za
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