Zuma has little chance of fixing Zim’s issues
March 16 2010 at 03:25PM
By Peta Thornycroft
Foreign Service
President Jacob Zuma’s mission to Harare on Monday is inspiring little hope among Zimbabweans that he can fix their broken year-old unity government.
Both President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and the powerless Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai seem resigned to early elections to end their failed partnership, settle their protracted political dispute and produce a
single-party government.
The unity government was supposed to make the reforms and change the political environment to enable free and fair elections next year under a new constitution. But that has not happened and seems unlikely to. Just last
week Mugabe transferred full control of the election machinery to his party.
So the MDC fears that Zanu-PF will conduct a rigged and even more violent election campaign than the one two years ago which eventually led to the formation of the unity government. But it sees no choice as Mugabe has
paralysed the present administration.
Zuma is the official facilitator of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which guaranteed the political agreement of September 2008 that led to the formation of the unity government.
He has set aside three days to try to solve the deadlock. But he has limited options as the two main political leaders harden their positions in preparation for elections.
In the political agreement, facilitated by former President Thabo Mbeki, only Mugabe can dissolve parliament and call new elections – within 90 days.
Tsvangirai, analysts say, would participate, even knowing a new poll would be unfair and violent and that he would not get the international peacekeeping force he has demanded to ensure a free and fair poll.
There is nothing in the agreement that underpins the unity government to prevent new elections being called now, even though the SADC godfathers of this troubled marriage wanted it to create the conditions for proper
elections.
The MDC had hoped Zuma would be tougher on Mugabe than Mbeki was, to ensure that.
But he has achieved nothing so far, they say. Mugabe’s minor concessions such as appointing a few MDC ambassadors and a reasonably neutral human rights commission were ineffectual Zanu-PF initiatives to try to persuade the European Union to lift targeted sanctions against Zanu-PF cronies.
In fact the situation has got worse since Zuma sent in his own mediators late last year.
On top of the many previous outstanding issues from the agreement blocked by Zanu-PF, two weeks ago Mugabe signed a law which simply took power away from three ministries assigned to the MDC during negotiations and gave them to Zanu-PF ministers.
Most ominously, Zanu-PF justice minister Patrick Chinamasa was given power over elections. This, according to senior MDC sources, will be Tsvangirai’s central complaint to Zuma.