The Pretoria Agreement on Côte d’Ivoire signed at the presidential guest house has all the high-pressure, belt-and-braces characteristics of a South African-brokered peace deal in Africa.
In this case, President Thabo Mbeki was forced to use some deal-saving sleight of hand to sidestep an insurmountable constitutional barrier.
The formula devised at South Africa’s own Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) process has been applied to nailing the proverbial jelly to the wall in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.
Simply put it involves getting the belligerents to the table and keeping them there until they sign.
External pressure from Africa and the international community at large become ancillary to the peer pressure mounting within the forum itself.
The question often asked is: ”Do you want to be identified to your people as the person who wrecked this process?”
The signed accord invariably has specific time-bound clauses.
This stratagem has drawn in the most intransigent elements in some of the continent’s most intractable conflicts. The Pretoria Agreement is no exception.
The accord begins with joint declaration of ”encompassing an immediate and final cessation of all hostilities and the end of the war throughout the national territory”. Military leaders will meet on this within two weeks.
On his return to Abidjan on Wednesday night President Laurent Gbagbo said: ”I could not have hoped for better.”
Côte d’Ivoire Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, who was among the signatories, told a special session of the Pan African Parliament on Thursday that the accord ”will allow Ivoireans to understand that there will be no more war and there will have to be a basis of trust”.
Within a week, Mbeki will go to the United Nations to get the world body to underpin the agreement.
The legislative process required to implement the January 2003 Linas Marcoussis Agreement must be completed by the end of this month.
Mbeki has been adamant throughout his four-month handling of this hot potato that the French-brokered agreement remains effectively the blueprint for Ivoirean peace.
This is why French President Jacques Chirac’s criticism in February of Mbeki’s apparently underwhelming progress was so keenly felt.
However, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier was among the first to hail the breakthrough in Pretoria.
French and South African officials were cautiously optimistic about Gbagbo’s response back in Abidjan.
His characteristic reaction once he feels pressure from within his own party ranks is to describe the accords as medicine to be tried and then rejected if he does not find it efficacious.
This is why Mbeki has opted to bring the UN into the process. He will report back to African Union chairperson, Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, and seek support for his mediation with strong action against any backslider. But his emphasis will be on the UN whose Security Council has mandatory sanctions hanging over Côte d’Ivoire.
Mbeki had asked the UN to stay its hand to give his facilitation some space to work. Now he will ask it to make it plain that it is prepared to lower the boom to enforce the accord.
The UN will also be asked to help the mediation around the one hurdle that could not be cleared by the four days of intensive negotiations in Pretoria —the constitutional provision that requires both parents of presidential candidates to be born in Côte d’Ivoire. Former president Henri Konan Bedie introduced it to keep opposition leader Alassane Ouattara from running.
Gbagbo, equally threatened by Ouattara, has happily maintained it.
At one stage in the process he suggested a referendum on the issue but the very people who would vote for a change in the citizenship regulations would be precluded from doing so by that very article in the Constitution.
It is also generally accepted that such a move would substantially delay the process leading to elections in October. All parties now appear to be committed to that time-frame.
Mbeki will urge the UN to pass a resolution declaring all signatories of the Pretoria Agreement eligible as presidential candidates. Since Ouattara is one of these, this would obviate the need for any constitutional change.
The issue of Ivoireans denied citizenship because of mixed parentage will have to be dealt with later.
More importantly, it would give Gbagbo a way out. He can tell angry supporters he is complying with a UN resolution rather than admit to caving in at the negotiating table in Pretoria.