Zimbabwe: Holding Hands As Region Gets Tough

[Chirios]

http://www.theafricareport.com/archives ... 67882.html

Zimbabwe: Holding hands as region gets tough
WRITTEN BY PATRICK SMITH AND 
FRANK CHIKOWORE IN HARARE
WEDNESDAY, 27 JULY 2011 18:45
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The country is waiting for change and internationally acceptable elections. But so much has to be agreed, it could be at least a year before voters can go to the polls. A lot can happen in the meantime.



Surrealism reigns in Zimbabwe’s political life. Ostensibly there is a coalition government committed to pushing through radical constitutional reforms and holding credible elections. There is a power-sharing cabinet whose members boast more doctorates and masters’ degrees than their European counterparts, and some have run substantial companies. 


Mugabe and Tsvangirai are circling around the seat of power ©SIPA
On the face of it, the new managers have pulled the economy back from the brink. Hardy investors are alighting on the Great Dyke, a mineral-rich band running between Harare and Bulawayo, which holds some of the most valuable reserves of platinum, gold, silver, chromium and nickel in the world. Don’t forget Zimbabwe’s armed forces, once in demand as UN peacekeepers for their reputation of being among the most disciplined and best trained in the developing world.


Yet a glance at the morning newspaper headlines – there are now three independent dailies competing with the state-owned Herald – and meetings with a few politicians and business types is enough to convince a visitor that the country is heading for more political convulsion.


Four days after The Africa Report interviewed trade and industry minister Welshman Ncube in early July, police arrested him and two other cabinet ministers, Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga and Moses Mzila Ndlovu, on their way back from a meeting in Victoria Falls. Another two dozen members of Ncube’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-N) party were held in the same swoop. 


This followed the arrest in June of energy minister Elton Mangoma, a member of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T faction, on spurious charges of fraud that had already been thrown out by the High Court. A few days earlier, police had arrested Jameson Timba, minister of state in Tsvangirai’s office, for making disrespectful remarks about 87-year-old president Robert Mugabe.


Tsvangirai, who has received several police beatings including an attempt to hurl him out of the window of a Harare skyscraper, is still singled out as a “national security threat” by senior officers such as Brigadier Douglas Nyikayaramba and ZANU-PF politburo member Jonathan Moyo. 


For all this, Tsvangirai and Ncube show an almost eerie forbearance towards the slings and arrows of the current political contest. After Brig. Nyikayaramba accused Tsvangirai of threatening national security because of suspect relations with western politicians, Tsvangirai told The Africa Report: “Why should it concern me …? How do you get a third-ranking army brigadier making a statement like that? He’s acting outside the law, he’s acting outside the policy.” 


Both Tsvangirai and Ncube, who differ on tactical issues, are wedded to constitutionalism and are prepared to play a long game. They see the intensified political harassment as a bid to push the MDC to quit the coalition and trigger an election. ZANU-PF tacticians know that they cannot walk out and be taken seriously by the other states in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).


To facilitate dialogue between the MDC and ZANU-PF, SADC officials have made it clear that any elections held before key reforms are agreed would lack legitimacy in the region and with the African Union (AU). Without those reforms being implemented and agreed by all parties, SADC and the AU will not send observer missions to validate the elections. That has changed political calculations in Harare. 


“The SADC is exasperated and exhausted and fed up with us, there can be no doubt about that; they say it to our face,” said Ncube. “They have plainly said they don’t want Zimbabwe to be an issue after the next elections, whenever they are held.”


Timing of the elections is critical. Publicly, the two sides – ZANU-PF and the MDC – look irreconcilable. ZANU-PF’s secretary for information, Rugare Gumbo, said on 14 July that the party was determined to push ahead with elections. “The politburo [policy-making body of ZANU-PF] is unanimous that elections should be held this year. [Patrick] Chinamasa gave us a report on the election roadmap, taking us through the time frames.”


This reiterated the position of the generals and former spin doctor Jonathan Moyo, who accuses the MDC of playing a double game and fearing defeat in early polls. “Tsvangirai and his MDC faction cannot be an opposition and a ruling party at the same time. The fact that MDC-T and its leader continue to use opposition tactics while they are in government clearly shows that they are inherently subversive and should be treated as such,” he said.


Moyo, whose peregrinations from arch critic of ZANU-PF to its hyper-loyal tribune are legendary, has been a close ally of defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa since 2005 when the two were linked to the Tsholotsho plot against Vice-President Joice Mujuru. Now Moyo and Mnangagwa have coalesced around a securocrat faction within ZANU-PF, arguing that the party’s best chance of holding onto power is an early election. 


That explains the current election fever in Harare, with ZANU-PF talking about holding primary elections to select MPs and stepping up criticism of the MDC’s record in The Herald and other state-owned media. 


Politicking is also heating up in the countryside, where most voters live. War veterans’ champion Jabulani Sibanda has been running a violent campaign to drive out MDC supporters from the key province of Masvingo. Sibanda’s tactics have been so rough that some local ZANU-PF supporters asked him to leave, fearing his campaign would damage the party.


Ncube says the MDC and others have long seen the Zimbabwe Defence Force as the armed wing of ZANU-PF and have to judge how seriously to treat this push for an early election. The securocrats, according to Ncube, are saying to Mugabe: “We can win it for you if we have an election now.” Everyone recalls the horrors during the second round of the presidential election in June 2008 when the army, the police and allied militias persecuted MDC supporters until Tsvangirai eventually withdrew from the polls.


Current levels of political violence are way below the 2008 crisis says Ncube. “In 2008 you had a country under siege, literally at war. As a journalist you could be arrested any time, party activists were disappearing and being killed on a weekly basis, so there is absolutely no comparison.” 


The climate has entirely changed with the power-sharing government, insist Ncube and Tsvangirai. Cabinet meetings are generally constructive, dealing with substantive issues not rhetoric, and there is a surprising degree of agreement, they say.

MDC activists campaign almost everywhere and their leaders are freely quoted in the growing independent press. The fact that an MDC finance minister, Tendai Biti, largely controls the government’s purse strings has helped change the balance of power. 


Most critically, there are the negotiations over the roadmap for the planning of the next elections. The MDC factions and the ZANU-PF negotiating team, led by minister of justice and legal affairs Patrick Chinamasa, are working through a detailed list of tasks which include consultations on constitutional reform, holding a referendum, reforming the electoral and media commissions, compiling a new electoral register and passing new electoral laws. 


Alongside, there will be more delicate and private discussion about transitional arrangements: senior military figures will demand guarantees of security if there is to be a credible election and real possibility of a change of government. 
Accordingly, Ncube and Tsvangirai argue that elections cannot be held before mid-2012 at the earliest. All sides accept that any plan has to win the endorsement of regional leaders due to meet in Luanda in August. Since a SADC meeting in Livingstone in March criticised ZANU-PF’s footdragging on political and constitutional reform, the pace of negotiations has quickened.


Chinamasa is struggling to convince his hard-line colleagues that holding elections this year would lose them regional and international support. That is the new reality facing Zimbabwe’s politicians, one that holds out the best hope of credible elections and the beginning of a sustained economic revival in a country that should be one of Africa’s brightest stars.

[madd0ct0r]

well, not everything has gone to shit yet.

and it sounds like the MDC are doing well enough that certain establishment members might be wanting to hedge their bets.

it depends whether Mugabe has enough people loyal unto the end and is stupid enough to crash the car rather then give up the steering wheel.

then it'll depend on whether the MDC has absorbed or is protecting too many members of the old regime to be credible.

[Lord Zentei]

Zimbabwe needs a whole lot more than just getting Mugabe out. The problems that country faces are legion and hardly manifest in a single person. It will take a long time for things to get even moderately acceptable again, both socially and economically.