New hurdles blocked this week’s efforts to break Zimbabwe’s political deadlock, which has gained fresh urgency with a fast-deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country.
A deal that will lead to anything substantial ”appears increasingly unlikely”, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said this week. He was not turning away from the deal, he said, but he now did not believe a unity government would be the solution to the Zimbabwe crisis.
Robert Mugabe’s reappointment of the country’s controversial central bank chief — seen as the clearest signal yet that he does not plan to allow extensive economic reforms — and the Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) bid to have former South African president Thabo Mbeki removed from the mediation process hamstrung this week’s talks.
As the talks began in South Africa the MDC accused Zanu-PF of ”intransigence and a lack of sincerity” and pledged to reject a deal that leaves it a junior partner in a new government.
Zanu-PF wants to limit further discussion to the constitutional amendments required to establish the unity government, but the MDC has brought in a broad range of grievances which it wants resolved before any real agreement can be requested.
The MDC has reached the Southern African Development Community to end Mbeki’s involvement in the negotiation process, after Mbeki wrote a letter in which he reportedly suggested that Tsvangirai was kowtowing to the West, and criticises him for calling regional leaders cowards. This is the second time this year the MDC has officially written to the SADC seeking Mbeki’s ÂÂreplacement.
Patience among Mugabe’s regional allies appears to be wearing thin. At a meeting of regional liberation movements this week ”our delegation was met with a surprising tone from some of the parties there”, a Zanu-PF member told the Mail & Guardian.
The government of Botswana, one of the region’s few outspoken critics of the Mugabe regime, has grown shriller in its criticisms, while new names of perceived Mugabe allies — including his personal doctor — have been added to a United States sanctions list.
But Mugabe appears as defiant as ever. In the past week he has thumbed his nose at the world by barring a delegation of the ”Elders” group from visiting the country and reappointed Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono to another five-year term. Gono has presided over world-record inflation — officially measured in July at 231-million percent — and a collapse of the local currency, from which he has been forced to drop a total of 13 zeros in the past two years.
Gono has also orchestrated the use of state resources to maintain support for Mugabe, fuelling the presidential patronage system by handing out tractors, combine harvesters, seeds, generators, cheap loans, foreign currency and buses to Mugabe allies.
MDC negotiators say that by reappointing Gono Mugabe is indicating that he will not back down from the policies that have ruined the Zimbabwean economy and that he will not support any changes in economic policy that an MDC finance minister might try to introduce.
Mugabe has conceded the finance ministry to the MDC, but his reappointment of Gono this week raises concerns about how far he will let his governing partners go towards introducing much-needed economic reforms.
”His message is clear,” a senior African diplomat said on Wednesday. ”He is saying nothing will change even if this deal goes ahead. He has just dealt this process a massive blow.”
Mugabe wants a clause inserted in the draft amendment that will allow him to call off the deal if he ”is satisfied that the circumstances are such that the continuance of the Interparty Political Agreement is no longer possible for any reason”.
The MDC said this clause was fraudulently added to the September 15 agreement and the party has made the ”illegal” changes a key point of the discussion.
Mugabe is also insisting on a clause that allows him to appoint nine more senators to the upper house of Parliament, which he already controls.
The MDC in turn wants more power to be given to the council of ministers, which Tsvangirai chairs, and to change the wording of the agreement to say that Mugabe can make policy decisions only with Tsvangirai.
The two sides also rowed over the detention of 15 MDC activists, who are being detained at undisclosed locations despite the high court’s demand that they be brought to court.
Zimbabwe’s refusal to allow the Elders, whom Mugabe’s spokesperson, George Charamba, described as ”a creature of pro-Labour British corporate interests”, to enter the country caused an uproar.