Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said he is ready to work with reformists in the ruling Zanu-PF party to end the country’s crisis, but analysts say the former trade unionist will find no suitors in a governing party that considers him severely weakened following a split in the opposition two years ago.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which burst on to the political scene in 1999 and very nearly swept President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF from power in elections in 2000 and 2002, has floundered recently after an acrimonious split within its top leadership over tactics to confront Zanu-PF.
Several internationally backed attempts to bring Zanu-PF and the MDC to the negotiating table have all ended in failure, with both parties bickering on pre-conditions.
”Within Zanu-PF a significant body of opinion today is in favour of a solution to the national crisis. We are ready to cooperate and work with committed patriots who see sense in what we seek to achieve,” Tsvangirai said in his New Year’s address.
”We need to realign our positions and embrace those willing to join hands and save Zimbabwe from further damage. Mugabe and Zanu-PF must be stopped from continuously abusing well-meaning Zimbabweans,” he added.
Critics, including the MDC, say Mugabe is solely responsible for a seven-year economic meltdown that has impoverished the majority, as runaway inflation continues in four-digit levels, unemployment stands at more than 80% and shortages of foreign currency, fuel and food persist.
But analysts say Tsvangirai’s call is certain to be rebuffed by both hawks and doves in Zanu-PF who appear united in blaming the opposition leader for inviting several Western nations to impose sanctions on top government officials and their relatives. Mugabe’s government says the visa and financial sanctions are hurting the majority the most.
They add that, in any event, there is little practical incentive for Zanu-PF — which enjoys absolute parliamentary majority and recently swept rural council polls — to accommodate its nemesis, Tsvangirai, who appears crippled by a split in his MDC over participation in Senate elections in 2005.
The split led to the rise of two competing MDC factions, the larger one led by Tsvangirai and the smaller by academic Arthur Mutambara — this at a time when Zanu-PF was reinforcing its decades-long grip on power.
”In Zanu-PF there are many hawks who find no basis for a common strategy, a common vision with the MDC, and really feel the MDC must be crushed once and for all so that Zanu-PF rules in perpetuity,” says Eldred Masunungure, chairperson of the political science department at the University of Zimbabwe.
”So it [Tsvangirai’s overture] is a long shot, really, also because if there is anything that unites Zanu-PF the most, it is its opposition to the very principles that the MDC stands for,” he adds.
Critics accuse Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s sole ruler since independence in 1980, of using heavy policing to keep opponents at bay. However, they say there could be open dissent within his party over plans to extend his rule by two more years to 2010, which has the open backing of eight of Zanu-PF’s 10 provincial executives.
”But in the long run there could be some reformists within Zanu-PF who are opposed to this harmonization of elections,” Masunungure says.
”So, as the succession boils over, we may see a very broad alliance including doves within Zanu-PF and the MDC coming together to form a common strategy,” says the respected Masunungure, suggesting all hope may not be lost on possible cooperation in the long term between elements in the governing party and the opposition.
Mugabe has previously branded Tsvangirai and the MDC as puppets of the West, arguing that the opposition is a front for Western countries fighting his government over his controversial policy of seizing land from white commercial farmers to resettle blacks. — ZimOnline