President Robert Mugabe hurriedly rescheduled a planned visit to China after he choked on the tough conditions that South Africa slapped on its R6-billion credit line to Zimbabwe to avert its expulsion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Sources in Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the Mail & Guardian that Mugabe baulked at “bringing forward the 2008 presidential elections, jump-starting talks with the opposition and forming a government of national unity”. The ruling Zanu-PF, it is understood, was divided on the conditions. The overwhelming sentiment, however, was to view the other with suspicion, expressing “reservations that hostile countries were extending the money” and “pressuring” Pretoria.
Zimbabwe has to cough up $290-million in debt to the IMF by next month. And, last Saturday, Mugabe jetted off to Beijing to make a case for a slice of China’s estimated $700-billion in foreign currency reserves. This week Zimbabwe signed several agreements with the Chinese on economic and technical issues, but details have been scant.
Respected Harare-based economics commentator, John Robertson, told the M&G that lines of credit from China are likely to be secured through barter trade. “I don’t think it will help in any way to bring down prices. Inflation will continue to rise. We won’t be able to pay them in dollars. It will be nice to know the terms, precisely what is being bartered. The big question is: Are we selling at better prices than on the open market, or are we selling cheaply because we are desperate? The Chinese are very smart business people, they think about themselves, not the welfare of Zimbabweans,” Robertson cautioned.
In Parliament on Wednesday, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MP Job Sikhala said, “We have become a nation of beggars. The sovereignty of this country is being sold to the Chinese and South Africa.”
Independent MP Jonathan Moyo laid into the government’s handling of Operation Murambatsvina, which, he said, was “conducted with the ferocity of a tsunami” and had created a “state of emergency”. There were also calls for an independent judicial inquiry, and for those responsible to be prosecuted.
The demolitions continued this week despite a damning report by United Nation’s special envoy Anna Tibaijuka, who described the situation in Zimbabwe as a humanitarian crisis of “immense proportions”. The language used in the report was unusually harsh by UN standards. For her efforts, Tibaijuka earned a scathing rebuke from Harare in The Herald: “[The report] is out and with it the realisation that the problems we face as Africans will be with us for a long time to come. This is because, no matter how educated we are or our standing in the world, some Africans can still be shamelessly manipulated by Western powers.”
On Wednesday, members of the 15-member UN Security Council urged its Secretary General, Kofi Annan, who himself described the report as “profoundly distressing”, to undertake an envisaged trip to Zimbabwe. But he has to wait for a formal invitation from Zimbabwe.
UN watchers who spoke to theM&G said the focus of Annan’s visit would be to “help cool the temperature and lower the international decibels against Mugabe in an effort to secure humanitarian access to those affected, and in the longer term political reform in that country.”
Zimbabwe was the cause of tension at the deliberations of the Security Council this week as three African countries on the council (Benin, Algeria and Tanzania) joined China and Russia in opposing the move to place Zimbabwe on its agenda.