Zimbabwe’s governing Zanu-PF party, upbeat that its charm offensive is starting to bear fruit, has told its combative ministers to tone down anti-Western rhetoric, government officials said.
The move comes after French leader Jacques Chirac broke ranks with the rest of Europe to invite President Robert Mugabe to a Franco-African summit in Paris later this month.
”Quiet diplomacy” is now the key phrase in the corridors of Munhumutapa Building, Mugabe’s Harare offices, as foreign affairs experts — who had been sidelined by hawkish allies of the Zanu-PF leader — begin to slowly gain the upper hand after what they consider is their first major coup to shed Zimbabwe’s pariah status in Europe and the United States.
Chirac braved the expected ire of fellow European leaders like British Prime Minister Tony Blair when he announced recently that he had invited Mugabe to the summit on February 20, two days after the official expiry of a 12-month European travel ban on Mugabe and 80 of his closest allies.
Ironically, Chirac’s invitation comes in the wake of hardening attitudes towards Mugabe in London and other key Western capitals, including Washington, Bonn, Stockholm and Canberra, while leaders in countries such as Portugal and Greece are softening and have indicated that they want to end the Zimbabwean leader’s international isolation.
Britain and Australia have been most critical of Mugabe’s rule and have tried to stop their cricket teams from participating in February world cup matches in Harare and Bulawayo.
The move was an attempt to protest against alleged human rights abuses and Mugabe’s mismanagement of the economy that have resulted in hunger and widespread poverty.
The US this week urged its citizens to stay clear of the troubled Southern African state and just stopped short of ordering Americans living in the country to get out.
Experts this week said the mandarins at Munhumutapa, aided by South African President Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo — both of whom have long protested against Mugabe’s isolation — were upbeat. They believe that while there might not be an immediate universal acceptance of the veteran Zimbabwean leader’s policies, the West was now prepared to give him an ear.
The experts said dovish Mugabe advisers, including Speaker of Parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa and Foreign Affairs Minister Stan Mudenge, had succeeded in getting the Zimbabwean leader to zip up his combative supporters such as prickly and gaffe-prone Information Minister Jonathan Moyo.
The success of Mugabe’s charm offensive, which, besides the invitations to jaw-jaw and wine and dine in Paris and Lisbon, includes the public acceptance of his land reforms by the formerly hostile white commercial farmers, has sent the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) into a frenzy.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, stung by Harare’s diplomatic coup, is behaving like a man with a bee in his bonnet: he is swinging indiscriminately at anyone within reach — from Chirac to the South Africans to the Nigerians and even the British.
Brian Raftopoulos, a Harare-based independent analyst, says the thawing of relations between Mugabe and some Western leaders was ”problematic” for the MDC, which has been lobbying for his continued isolation, especially in Europe and the US.
Raftopoulos said Tsvangirai’s immediate response to the perceived thawing of relations was also inappropriate, because ”rather than blast everybody at this stage”, the MDC leader should have embarked on a path of soft diplomacy of his own.
Mugabe’s critics, however, may be relieved to know that the Zanu-PF leader might not have it all his own way in France.
Some Francophone leaders such as Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade have in the past blasted the Zimbabwean president’s policies as retrogressive to Africa’s economic recovery, and might relish the chance to have a go at him once more in Paris.