South Africa’s patience with Zimbabwe is running thin. President Thabo Mbeki is no longer prepared to grit his teeth and stare down his critics to defend his “quiet diplomacy” approach to the troubles on his northern front.
In an interview with the SABC last Sunday, he as much as conceded that he had been duped into believing that informal talks between the Zanu-PF government and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change would yield a political breakthrough. This after the two parties had presented him with a draft constitution “initialled by everybody” in 2004. The plan was abandoned after “new problems arose between them”, Mbeki said.
He reflected an air of weariness about the way Zimbabwe continues to dominate foreign affairs debates within the ANC. A party insider said, “We’re inclined now to leave the Zimbabweans to sort things out for themselves before we can move along. We continue to impress on both sides the need for them to find the solution, that no-one else can do it for them,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said Eskom’s cutting off of Harare’s electricity supply and a recent directive by the Department of Minerals and Energy to local oil contractors to halt supplies “is certainly part of that pressure, but more by the law of unintended consequences than hard design. We are saying that Eskom has to do maintenance that will interrupt the flow of power to Zimbabwe, and we in South Africa are ourselves experiencing fuel shortages. If this illustrates the extent of their reliance on South Africa, then it is all good and well.”
Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni warned in off-the-cuff comments at a seminar last year that “the wheels have come off there. I am saying this as forcefully as I am because the developments in Zimbabwe are affecting us and stressing us unnecessarily.”
The M&G perused the 108-page draft constitution in Harare this week. It proposed the establishment of five commissions: on elections, human rights and social justice, land, media and an anti-corruption body. It mooted that a prime minister lead government and an executive president be head of state. The creation of a Senate was also contained in the document as well as provision for presidential and parliamentary elections to run concurrently. The document Mbeki alluded to in his interview also envisaged the setting up of a constitutional court in Zimbabwe and set a two-term limit for the president.
But, on Tuesday, the feuding leaders of the MDC momentarily ditched their differences to deny ever agreeing with Zanu-PF on a draft or handing it to Mbeki.
“As a party we are not aware of what he is talking about. We are in shock,” MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai told ZimOnline. In a separate interview, his party nemesis and MDC founding secretary general Welshman Ncube said, “I can confirm that during the informal party dialogue meetings between myself and [justice minister Patrick] Chinamasa, one of the things we did was to draw up a draft constitution which we had hoped would form the basis for the formulation of a political settlement of the disputed issues in Zimbabwe. That document was never adopted by any of the groups as far as I know. It therefore fell through,” said Ncube, who would not be drawn on the authenticity of the 108-page draft seen by the M&G.
Presidential spokesperson Murphy Morobe insisted that Mbeki stood by his statement. “The president would never lie about an issue as important as this.”
Chinamasa is quoted as saying that “the constitution is what resulted in the reintroduction of the senate. Obviously, when two sides discuss, you cannot agree on everything.”
This is not the first time the MDC has contradicted Mbeki. In January 2004, Mbeki told then German chancellor Gerhard Schröder that ZanuPF and the MDC had agreed to talks. The negotiations were delayed, he explained, only by the long summer holiday in the southern hemisphere.
Within hours, Tsvangirai denied Mbeki’s contention and the party has since repeatedly denied that it was in dialogue with the ruling party.