‘Democracy for one is democracy for all’

Dialogue between the two main political parties in Zimbabwe since the three Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders’ visit to Harare earlier this month is deadlocked.

South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo and Malawi’s President Bakili Muluzi had called on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to get the two parties talking.

Shortly after the visit South African Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told the media the ruling Zanu-PF and the MDC would meet to draw up an agenda and framework for negotiations.

But MDC shadow foreign minister, Moses Mzila, speaking to the Mail & Guardian last week, said he was unaware of any such process.

The spokesperson at Zanu-PF’s South African office, Gadzira Chiriumhanzu, said the MDC was “not serious” about pursuing negotiations. He said the MDC’s refusal to acknowledge Mugabe as a legitimate leader has blocked the process.

Mzila said the MDC’s leadership had been approached by individuals within the Zanu-PF to “make a deal — but how do we know that they are not trying to involve us in a [Ari] ben Manashe-like situation again?”

Ben Manashe, a former Israel military agent, has implicated the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, in an alleged plot to assassinate Mugabe. The MDC claims Ben Manashe was used by the Zimbabwean authorities to frame Tsvangirai to discredit him ahead of the March 2002 presidential polls.

While South African foreign affairs insiders felt that the MDC was not being flexible enough, Director General Abdul Minty told the M&G it was “only natural that in the initial stages the two parties will get polarised”.

He said the South African government continues to be “hopeful” that progress will be made and insisted that the two parties are exchanging dialogue behind the scenes. Minty said: “Even the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was very pleased with the process.”

Mzila said there was a need to “build confidence — we need to know the Zanu-PF is sincere”.

Because of the lack of trust, Mzila insists the process to initiate dialogue between the two parties has to be driven either by the African Union or the SADC, or both.

He said the three SADC leaders and the two political parties need to sit together to draw up a joint statement on the talks held on May 5. The statement he felt would help pave the way forward.

Tsvangirai in a statement this week hoped that the initiative backed by the three countries is not “one of those short-lived diplomatic efforts, such as what happened in 2002, ahead of the G8 meeting and the marketing of [the New Partnership for Africa’s Development], and will soon lose momentum afterwards”.

South African foreign affairs insiders, however, believe Tsvangirai is “inexperienced as a strategist and does not understand the rules of negotiations”.

They believe that Mugabe — with pronouncements such as the one last week when he said debates about his succession should begin within the Zanu-PF — is creating the space for dialogue.

Chiriumhanzu confirmed that debates were taking place within the party about Mugabe’s succession. But, he said, Mugabe will only step down at the party’s congress next year after he “has been assured that the control of the country is in the hands of the indigenous people of Zimbabwe”, which Chiriumhanzu said included the black and white sections of the population.

Tsvangirai said the MDC had not set any preconditions for the resumption of dialogue and the issue of Mugabe’s legitimacy “was an agreed item for discussion on the agenda”.

Mzila pointed out that while the MDC’s leadership had been invited by Muluzi to confer in Malawi, the MDC would prefer that “instead of several parallel processes, we should have one unitary process to drive the negotiations otherwise Mugabe will try to wriggle through them”.

Mzila also chastised African and Asian countries for blocking a European Union-backed draft resolution at the United Nations Commission for Human Rights last month expressing concern at the human rights abuse in Zimbabwe.

He said: “It prevented the matter from becoming a concern of the UN. We were horrified and we view it as a conspiracy against Zimbabweans by our own African brothers, who decided to align themselves with a wicked system headed by a fascist dictator.”

Mzila pooh-poohed the developing world’s concern expressed during the vote on the resolution that the West, by pushing these resolutions on the situation in African and Asian countries, was trying to impose its own version of democracy.

“We are talking of a regime responsible for the massacre of 30 000 people in the 1980s. There are 3 000 people dying in Zimbabwe everyday of Aids and food shortage-related illness. There is no African or Asian democracy. Democracy is democracy.

“Democracy means you allow people to enjoy civil liberties — where you have a person ruling the country with the mandate from the people. It is like what they did to socialism — everyone was trying to implement their own interpretation of socialism — which was different from the basic principles of socialism espoused by Karl Marx.

“Mugabe does not have the mandate of the people. It was the SADC’s observer team which declared that the presidential elections last year had been rigged — so how can they support an illegitimate government?  How dare the Third World connive with Mugabe?”

Chiriumhanzu denied that the Zanu-PF was involved in any human rights abuse in the country and described the report detailing the abuse presented at last week’s Commonwealth meeting as the “work of white racists”.

He said he was not aware of the arrests of trade unionists during the protest action against the 200% hike in the fuel price last month.

Mzila underlined that the anti-apartheid movement was a “classic case” where support from “white people” like Father Trevor Huddlestone and the former Swedish prime minister Olof Palme helped it to become a strong international movement.

“So why is the Third World angry if we get support from any Western country? Our doors are open to everyone who will speak for democracy. Why should Britain or the United States be made to feel guilty if they speak about human rights abuse in Zimbabwe?”

But the South African foreign affairs insiders pointed out that the MDC should realise that Zimbabwe’s neighbours are African countries and not Europe.