The clock is ticking for Pretoria, whose mediation in Zimbabwe’s political crisis is off to a sluggish start as looming elections leave little time to bring about results, according to analysts.
International hopes are pinned on President Thabo Mbeki’s ability to initiate talks between President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party and an opposition that he has set about brutally crushing over recent weeks.
However, with Mbeki’s limited mandate to go where he and others have failed before, less than a year until Zimbabwe is expected to hold its elections and Mugabe as bullish as ever, many expect the process to be a lacklustre effort.
According to political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki South Africa’s much-criticised policy of quiet diplomacy was a ”do-nothing scenario”.
”The government’s response, I think, is to be seen to be trying to do something, but there is no threat to its own interest which makes it want to make a serious investment to bringing about change in Zimbabwe,” said Mbeki of the South African Institute of International Affairs.
Two past mediation efforts, by president Mbeki and former Mozambican counterpart Joaquim Chissano, ended in stalemate, and yet again Mugabe seems unwilling and Mbeki unable to force the opposing sides to solve their problems.
When asked whether time was running out for South Africa, an expert in regional politics at Pretoria’s University of South Africa, said: ”Most certainly, they have got the mandate and they will try their best, but the prospects of success are unlikely.”
This week Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma warned that South Africa could not be expected to ”do any magic” with its troubled neighbour while her deputy, Aziz Pahad, said that the mediation efforts were only at the ”pre-dialogue” stage.
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party seems intent on making it as difficult as possible for mediation to succeed, refusing to talk until the opposition toes its line.
”They must sever their diabolical links to former colonisers and embrace democratic principles to ascend to political power,” said an editorial in the latest edition of the party mouthpiece, The Voice.
”If that is not done, then there is no chance Zanu-PF can talk to them as it is tantamount to supping with the devil.”
Lovemore Madhuku, head of Zimbabwe’s National Constitutional Assembly, said Mugabe had shown no interest in dialogue and had only agreed to mediation to appease his peers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), who asked Mbeki to step in last month.
”We knew these talks were never going to succeed, it is Mugabe’s technique of buying time,” he told the Mail and Guardian.
With elections a matter of months away, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change is currently refusing to take part as scores of its members are beaten up and its rallies banned.
The analyst Mbeki, who is the president’s brother, said the South African government had no drive to do anything serious about the situation across the border as its dominant political elites were not affected by it.
He said these elites were only concerned with wealth redistribution, and the millions of Zimbabwean refugees pouring into South Africa only affected the country’s poor, who had to compete with them for jobs.
”So it’s not the elite that get affected, it’s the poor that get affected. In this situation there is no need for South Africa to take any action about what is happening in Zimbabwe because it doesn’t affect their interests.” — Sapa-AFP