No easy options left for Tsvangirai

• Mugabe, Tsvangirai in private meeting

• Tsvangirai hopeful of breakthrough at summit

• South Africa to host new Zimbabwe summit

• SADC summit unlkely to break deadlock

• 'Sad day' as Mugabe, Tsvangirai fail to agree on power sharing

• Compared: Tsvangirai and Mugabe's ministerial wish lists

• Document: Tsvangirai MDC reveals ministerial demands

• US, UK plans to torpedo unity government draw fire

• US withdraws support for unity government

• Alfi Nyoni: Why Tsvangirai must join government

Comment from South Africa's Sunday Independent newspaper, capturing what went on in talks between President Robert Mugabe, his opposition rivals and regional leaders in marathon meetings in Harare on Monday, January 19, 2009

By Peta Thornycroft
Posted to the web: 25/01/2009 21:59:11
THE view of Harare from the Zambezi Suite of the Yugoslavian-built hotel where the latest talks for a unity government deadlocked on Monday, is green and lovely after the rains.

Streets lined with trees in full leaf, and heavily wooded, smarter northern suburbs stretch into a wide rural horizon from the windows of President Robert Mugabe's 17th-floor suite, named after Zimbabwe's largest river.

Mugabe also looks over the small city centre with a few colonial-era buildings dwarfed by a scattering of attractive post- independence office blocks. From the maroon circle of leather sofas in the Zambezi suite, there is no hint at the misery below; savage, wheel-crunching potholes fill with the lunch-time summer downpour mingled with sewage rising from broken pipes.

Conveniently, Mugabe's outlook at the top of the hotel does not take in the south and west of Harare, the densely packed townships where the misery of his decades of misrule is concentrated. He has not bothered to go to see the foreign doctors saving the lives of people infected with cholera in these townships. The numbers infected are said to be about 50 000 and the death toll is nearing 3 000.

Mugabe is in good spirits when he arrives for the talks, which he says are the final round. Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), also says the talks are a last chance to resolve "outstanding" issues since he signed a political agreement with Mugabe and minority leader Arthur Mutambara in September to end the political impasse, and form an inclusive transitional government ahead of fresh elections.

Kgalema Motlanthe, the President of South Africa, who is also the chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and who is mediating the deadlocked Zimbabwe negotiations, former President Thabo Mbeki, who is the appointed SADC facilitator, and Armando Guebuza, the Mozambican President, meet Mugabe in the enormous Zambezi suite.

Mugabe complains that he has done what he had to do to allow formation of an inclusive government and that if Tsvangirai doesn't want to join it immediately, then he will be forced to go it alone.

Technically, he has done what is necessary, including gazetting a negotiated constitutional amendment to enable an interim government, but he has also abused continuously the original political agreement since he signed it, the worst being kidnapping about 30 of Tsvangirai's supporters, who are now in prison.

Then it is Tsvangirai's turn with the two Presidents and Mbeki in the much smaller top-floor Sebakwe Suite, named after another Zimbabwe river.

Tsvangirai, who avoids even looking at Mbeki, who says nothing when the MDC leader is in the room, insists that he has to meet one-on-one with Mugabe. The meeting is arranged but Mugabe is so contemptuous of Tsvangirai that the encounter lasts less than five minutes. This infuriates Tsvangirai and hands Mugabe what he sees as a victory over his main political opponent.

The two Presidents representing SADC then call on Arthur Mutambara, the leader of the smaller MDC, which has 10 parliamentary seats upon which Tsvangirai's MDC will depend to give them a majority in Parliament.

Tomaz Salamao, the SADC executive secretary, announces that the Mugabe/ Tsvangirai meeting has produced another deadlock. Mutambara suggests he meet Mugabe, alone. No one is sure what is said between the two, but Zanu PF raconteurs - most of them from the Central Intelligence Organisation - in the hotel coffee bar say that Mugabe, when reminded of his election defeat would have replied furiously: "I promise you that will never happen again."

Mutambara goes into a brief meeting with the two Presidents and Mbeki and encourages them to help by putting pressure on Mugabe to make concessions and to warn him that if he doesn't he will lose even more friends in Africa. Then the three Zimbabwean principals, Mugabe, Mutambara and Tsvangirai meet with the SADC trio to review a SADC summary which has tried to capture all the demands made by the Zimbabweans.

Tsvangirai asks to be excused for a few minutes and returns two hours later with a counter-proposal written by his advisors, who are stationed three floors below. He appears unsure of what is in the document. He is criticised by Guebuza for having asked for a SADC summit in November in Johannesburg and then describing it as a "nullity" when he disagreed with the 15 member states' consensus on allocation of ministries. Motlanthe tells Tsvangirai: "You speak to yourself but you don't listen."

The debate turns to what will become the sticking point of the day: Mugabe's unilateral appointment of 12 Zanu PF members to posts of provincial governors which SADC says, in terms of the political agreement, have to be distributed fairly, but after the formation of an interim government.

Mugabe is intransigent and Mutambara, in frustration, asks him: "So what is a governor then? Why can't you compromise?" Mugabe bends a little and says that if vacancies arise, they will be filled by people from the three parties according to an agreed formula. Governors have neither powers nor relevance in the body politic so the resolution of this impasse is, for both Mugabe and Tsvangirai, largely symbolic.

While Tsvangirai's advisors discuss a SADC document on "emerging consensus" Tsvangirai receives a call on his cellphone and is overheard saying that Mugabe has compromised a little and he feels he should too. But his advisors are against it. SADC maintains that his outstanding concerns have either already been resolved or will be addressed after an interim government is formed, including the matter of detainees, which will be resolved by a monitoring committee of nine people, three from each party.

If the interim government is formed, SADC and the African Union become guarantors of the agreement and will review progress, including allocation of ministries, after six months. But according to Tsvangirai's advisors, if the "outstanding" matters are not resolved he has but one unpleasant option to consider: obey them and remain out of an inclusive government.

Tsvangirai might decide, at a minute to midnight, to defy his advisors, and take an enormous political risk and agree to the interim arrangement. He knows the MDC has no plan B if he doesn't. Tsvangirai is paying a price for some of the advice he has been obliged to follow and he has rubbed up both Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma, the ANC president, the wrong way.

Caught perhaps between insecurity among advisors better educated than he, his instinct from the beginning is to give it a go, despite the extraordinary risks of being in a government with Mugabe. Tsvangirai seems to understand that Mugabe is not going to surrender, and that getting rid of him will be a painful and difficult process, not an event, and that joining is the only chance the MDC has of keeping its slim parliamentary majority. Tsvangirai's MPs are divided, some loyal to him to the death, others to Tendai Biti, the MDC secretary-general, and also the party's main strategist and advisor on negotiations.

The first group believes Biti is either challenging Tsvangirai for the top job or is trying to protect Zimbabwe from what he perceives to be Tsvangirai's incompetence.

Biti's loyalists have long been critical of Tsvangirai who, with Mugabe as an adversary, has one of the most difficult political jobs in the world. But most of them do agree that if push comes to shove, Tsvangirai is the people's choice, the only MDC politician with national appeal.

Conversation on several commuter buses in Harare, after the news of the latest deadlock breaks, is largely critical of Tsvangirai: "When we voted for Tsvangirai we thought he would be our messiah. If he cared about people he would have gone into this government before Christmas," says a middle-aged woman.

Better-off Zimbabweans, including intellectuals, remain convinced that no deal with Mugabe can ever work. "How do we know it will not get worse if Tsvangirai goes in?" But they, like the MDC, cannot suggest an alternative strategy to end Mugabe's rule.
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com