Sadc Indaba

Mugabe and Tsvangirai in the SADC sportlight over the GPA impasse on Monday 26 January 2009


For most Zimbabweans the Sadc meeting in South Africa on 25 January 2008 is best poised to decisively dispose of the impasse if only the regional leaders remain focussed on the key objective of impartially helping feuding Zimbabwean political opponents resolve their differences.

It would appear that the abundance of time after the signing of the base agreement to form an inclusive government has in a way allowed evaluative processes to negatively impact on the implementation process and cloud the object of Sadc mediation.

Mediation: "involves the intervention of an acceptable party who has limited or no authoritative decision-making power, but who assists the involved parties in voluntarily reaching a mutually acceptable settlement of issues in dispute" (Moore, 1996, 15).

There is basically no reason to suspect or believe that any of the parties that subscribed to the AU and UN mediation process has reached a point where it is felt that Sadc intervention has outlived its usefulness and is no longer acceptable to any or all of the parties to the Zimbabwe Global Political Agreement.

What is evident is that the evaluation process has established that lead Mediator and former South Africa President has lost credibility to lead the process and is now excess baggage that must be alleviated from the process before it can be positively turned around.

For the avoidance of doubt the overall objective of the mediation process has been and will always be to restore credible and effective democratic governance in the country in which the Zimbabweans believe and trust is representative of their needs.

To that end therefore, it would appear that before such a trustworthy government is formed, mistrust inducing areas must be visited and reassurances that they will not perpetuate or recur as the case may be, put in place.
This is the attitude that must pervade the Sadc meeting.

With the benefit of hindsight of positive and negatives that ensued after each of the six attempts it has indulged in to break the bottleneck to the formation of the inclusive government, one would assume that Sadc would by now be in possession of the factual basis upon which the logjam is anchored.

The assumption here being that in these preceding meetings mediators asked the right questions to expose passionate and sentimental differences from real issues necessary to address in order for a workable inclusive government relationship to be consummated.

We emphasise workable inclusive government relationship because without that the buy in necessary to legitimise it among Zimbabweans will not materialise if after consummation the inclusive government fails to deliver on key expectations among the majority of them.

In that respect therefore it is important that Sadc be mindful of what triggered its involvement in the Zimbabwe conundrum.

The crisis in Zimbabwe has been raging on for some time now because successive Zanu PF regimes have largely pursued partisan party political agendas at the expense of national interests.

Key government responsibilities towards habitants of the country have been neglected and or systematically preserved for a privileged few deemed supportive of the regimes.

Endemic corruption has been allowed to breed within government institutions resulting in the breakdown of the law and unimaginable human rights abuses that the successive regimes did their best to conceal under Pan Africanism and sovereignty mantra.

Critical service delivery infrastructure and social amenities have been allowed to disintegrate while the successive regimes pursued dysfunctional isolationist policies to entrench themselves in absolute power.

Massive service delivery dislocation ensued condemning the majority of the country’s population to abject poverty and in turn developing socio-economic and political strategies to counter state abuse they were and are still subjected to.

Each denizen strategy to cope with life under state abuse was to push the successive Zanu PF regimes to innovate more complex and vicious means of suppressing the counter strategies resulting in unbridled violent electoral conduct and rigging.

Regime legitimacy became increasingly questionable as each successive suppressive measure adopted bore increased evidence of repression and suppression of citizens’ will.

It became evident that the political crisis in the country had eluded local control when Sadc realised massive inflows of Zimbabwe political and economic refugees and ever increasing orders and pleas for food, and economic aid from Zimbabwe which the country was seemingly failing to pay for after delivery.

When in March 2007 Sadc and the entire world were shocked by video footage of assaulted opponents of the Mugabe regime while they were in police custody, Sadc had to act and they did.

Having established beyond reasonable doubt that political diversity intolerance on the part of the Zanu PF regime in Zimbabwe was at the centre of the political precipice in the country Sadc felt the correct entry point in managing the conflict was to officially encourage political protagonists in the country to officially recognise each other as legitimate political institutions in the country and learn to exist in their political diversity.

They officially appointed as mediator, then, South Africa President His Excellency Thabo Mbeki who had been involved with the crisis on a bilateral country to country level since 2001 when violent land seizures and a disputed Presidential electoral outcome put the country in global political bloc arenas.

Using his prior knowledge of the “key” political players and what now appears to be Zanu PF intelligence feedback he handpicked political entities led by Robert Mugabe, Professor Arthur Mutambara and Morgan Tsvangirai as the nucleus of his mediation effort.

The country was building up to a Constitutionally prescribed presidential election that had triggered political tensions when incumbent President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF had resolved to unilaterally defer the crucial election to 2010 arguing that was necessary to lower rising political tension and ameliorate electoral costs at a time when the country was in an economic quagmire.

In mutually working democracies such arguments as Zanu PF had raised would not have raised the political furore it did in Zimbabwe where the incumbency of Mugabe as President was in dispute from its disputed extension in 2001.

The thought of such a presidency being unilaterally extended by a cabal of beneficiaries to his presidency in parliament made up of majority he had handpicked to be in Parliament at a time they were refusing to heed loud cries for a New constitutional order was unpalatable for the majority.

It was vigorously resisted. In efforts to suppress the resistance Mugabe and Zanu PF committed the cardinal mistake of arresting leadership of opposition political parties and subjecting them to humiliating and vicious assaults while in custody that convinced SADC to intervene.

The motive of Sadc intervention was to ensure the country held violent free elections that allowed the electorate to express free will and choose leadership free from coercion that characterised previous elections in the country and were used to discredit the government that emerged.

These disputes had in turn morphed into targeted sanctions by influential global political blocs like the EU, the Commonwealth and Global economic players like the USA, Canada, Australia and the Breton Woods institutions.

In a way it can be interpreted that the Sadc intervention had in mind the realisation of a Zimbabwe government free of illegitimacy allegations and capable of restoring the country’s tarnished international image and it nearly paid off when despite failing to comprehensively address electoral malpractices entrenched in the system over years of neglect, a reasonably harmonised electoral process was staged in the country up to counting of votes when intervention by the military delayed and distorted the outcome.

All the same the results produced adequate pointers that the electorate was no longer in favour of a Mugabe led government while the military establishments in the country preferred such a government.

This is the outcome that must guide Sadc consistence in dealing with the Zimbabwe crisis.

The challenge is not how to get Mugabe and Tsvangirai to agree on power sharing in an inclusive government for the sake of clarity on who is in charge of the country.

Rather it is to get them to agree on what would best represent a compromised leadership position for the differing preference of the military and the people it serves in an inclusive government.

To establish that position in mediation Sadc must apply its mind to what would best define democracy in the situation where the military is at loggerheads with the citizenry on who should lead the country and of the two groups which is likely capable to hold international sway in attracting international support.

Said otherwise Sadc must position itself such that it clarifies the benefits that are likely to accrue to the country through the inclusive government initiative if;
a. The preferred military leader holds the balance of power or
b. The preferred civilian leader holds the balance of power or
c. If the two leaders have counterbalancing powers on each other until the electorate is given a chance to make a final ruling on whom of the two must be in sole charge of the country in a credible election where violent coercion will not be part of the equation in who to select as the undisputed head of State.

The current position guiding Sadc involvement in mediating the crises seems to be premised on the third scenario.

Consistent with that, and that is assuming we are accurate in our assessment of Sadc drivers in its involvement, It is imperative that Sadc asks the leaders to list the order of importance its constituency attaches to Cabinet portfolios agreed for the inclusive government and compare them to determine where there is variation.

Using that order it should be possible for Sadc to then decide what should constitute equitable counterbalancing of preferences and help the parties resolve their differences accordingly.

In the case of Provincial Governors, Permanent Secretaries, Diplomats and Heads of Key State institutions allotment, Sadc should not have much difficulty as there is consensus among GPA subscribers that these must be shared equitably.

The current problem appears to be when the sharing will be done rather than whether the sharing will be done.

This becomes a trust issue that requires irrevocable assurances from the mediators. Nothing is more reassuring than the realisation of the intent. Sadc must help leaders to realise that the effects and costs of terminating 90% of the occupants of these posts is nowhere near the cost of keeping them in place on the economic wellbeing of the country.

The incumbents realise they were appointed by a Government whose tenure of office has expired and many of them have qualifications and abilities to compete and win back their jobs in an inclusive government set up.

These are the true and deserving professionals that do not owe their appointment solely to political patronage.

Sadc must find out why a political party that has chosen inclusivity in governance would not want the same extended to the service delivery level at inception if not to retain attendant power and use partners in government as window dressers.

Sadc must never allow itself to be hamstrung by accusations of inconsistency and fabrications of insurgency without substance nor must it allow itself to be abused by real or perceived foreign sponsors of parties to the GPA.

The political situation in Zimbabwe is as dynamic as it is anywhere else in the world and decisions made today may be stale and of no consequence if they are not implemented and must be revised continuously to take account of prevailing realities and macro political environmental changes globally.

The only consistence required of Sadc in mediating the Zimbabwe crisis is that which leads to restoration of civilian political rights and economic dignity that at present have been usurped by the Military.

Anything at variance with that will simply not resolve the problems in the country with any degree of permanence.

There is too much depth and political insight in Sadc for them not to realise that making orders that do not take widely held and expressed fears on board simply does not further the quest to resolve the Zimbabwe impasse.