Right up to the last moment, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe appeared to be keeping up his hopes that he might be invited to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria this weekend.
That the Commonwealth summit would coincide with the annual conference of his ruling Zanu-PF party did not bother Mugabe two weeks ago.
”We look forward to participating at Abuja,” he said brightly, a week before.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo announced last week that the Zimbabwean leader would not be invited, after finding no evidence that Mugabe had carried out any reforms to meet the Commonwealth’s principles of democracy and governance.
The Zanu-PF annual conference, a three-day meeting of 3 000 rank-and-file supporters, was always opened by Mugabe on the Friday of the weekend on which it was held. This year, however, party officials had hinted he might speak instead on Thursday -‒ an arrangement which would allow him to deliver his speech and head off to Abuja, in case Obasanjo relented at the last moment.
Reports from travel agents that domestic flights from Harare on Thursday and Friday had been reduced without explanation added fuel to speculation. One of Air Zimbabwe’s few remaining aircraft was on standby for Nigeria, they suggested.
However, no official comment was available on what might well be a couple of coincidences.
Nor was there any hint from Abuja that Mugabe would be diverted from rallying the party faithful at the conference in the southern town of Masvingo.
A year since the last party conference, inflation had surged to 526%, gross domestic product was estimated to have shrunk nearly 20%, over five-million Zimbabweans were in the grip of a second year of famine and Zimbabwe had become number 112 in a list of 133 of the world’s most corrupt nations.
Only two weeks ago, similar conditions saw thousands of Georgians take to the streets of Tbilisi and drive out long-standing president Eduard Shevardnadze. Professor Eliphas Mukonoweshuro of the University of Zimbabwe’s politics department said: ”It’s a long shot to expect any kind of autonomous revolt. They’re like a pack of zombies. Everything that the ‘great leader’ says will be cheered by all the delegates.”
In the 23 years since he came to power in 1980, he said, Mugabe has got rid all of the old generation of black nationalist politicians who were his peers in the resistance against white minority Rhodesian rule, when the party had a tradition of open debate and public criticism of its leaders.
The wealthy, corrupt ruling hierarchy around Mugabe now were all beneficiaries of his patronage, said Mukonoweshuro. ”They are nothing without Mugabe. If there was a revolt and they got rid of him, they would lose everything they have — including his protection, and some of them would probably go to jail.
”How can you expect Mugabe’s own creations to stand up to him?”
This week, the chances of any important debate neutralised in advance. On Monday, ruling party spokesperson Nathan Shamuyarira announced that the conference ”will not discuss the issue of succession,” local shorthand for Mugabe’s retirement and the choice of his replacement.
Every previous conference since Mugabe approached retirement age had been preceded by almost identically worded bans by Shamuyarira on such talk.
On Tuesday, Mugabe delivered his annual state-of-the-nation address which had television viewers wondering which country he was talking about.
”Corruption and dishonesty will not be tolerated,” he intoned, a day after political intervention reversed the eviction of a senior party official from a white-owned farm he had grabbed for himself.
There would be ”rational management” of prices of basic commodities, an echo of the ”fine-tuning” to prices of basic commodities he promised at last year’s annual conference. Fourteen new post offices had been opened this year, he said, without a word on the strike that has stopped all postal deliveries for the last three weeks.
”The conference is a non-event. You are not going to get any decisions that will have any effect on the situation. The problem with Zimbabwe is political, not economic,” said Mukonoweshuro. – Sapa