Mugabe’s game-plan puts paid to Mbeki’s mediation

What is President Robert Mugabe up to? Two events in the past fortnight lay bare the wily octogenarian’s strategy.

On Monday he attempted to play the statesman. In an act of showmanship, he tried to give opposition leaders tractors and other equipment. In the same week his Cabinet authorised a raft of constitutional changes, which point to a far more sinister strategy.

On Monday a cheerful Mugabe cut ribbons and entertained hundreds of farmers with his trademark wit as he distributed agricultural machinery, part of a programme to restore decaying farm infrastructure.

Arthur Mutambara, leader of one faction of the split opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), his deputy, Gibson Sibanda, and secretary general Welshman Ncube, were named by state media, among about 20 opposition figures, who, Mugabe said, would receive tractors and other farm equipment under the programme.

On Wednesday, the opposition denied accepting any tractors — or any other gifts — from Mugabe. With diplomats in the crowd, many of them from Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, Mugabe sensed a great opportunity to play statesman.

”We are happy they are here and they are part of us in the entity we call the nation. No politics can ever make them alien. This is a national event, and therefore that realisation is very important, that there must be occasions when we must be together. And after all we eat together, don’t we?” said Mugabe.

But a week earlier Cabinet had proposed constitutional changes that critics say will make it even harder now for the SADC to help ease tensions before elections, due next March.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, Mugabe’s main negotiator in previous contact with the opposition, will push through proposals next month that will increase the size of the legislature — mainly through carving out new voting districts — and also establish a human rights watchdog, appointed by Mugabe.

Mugabe will also appoint the committee that draws up the new constituencies. The opposition accuses government of shifting district boundaries to weaken urban opposition strongholds, while adding more constituencies in rural areas, long a bedrock of Zanu-PF support.

But Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu says many rural constituencies are too big to manage.

The amendment would also cut the presidential term from six years to five, so that it runs in tandem with Parliament’s term. If the president dies, resigns or is constitutionally removed, Parliament would elect a new leader to hold office until the next scheduled election. This means Zanu-PF, which enjoys a two-thirds majority in the legislature, would elect the new president. Currently, a fresh presidential election would have to be called within 90 days.

Last week, South African ­President Thabo Mbeki’s Deputy ­Foreign Affairs Minister, Aziz Pahad, said it was ”obvious that we have to move decisively and urgently” on the talks. But Zanu-PF is not as keen to push the talks along as everybody else appears to be.

Inflation has reached a new record — 4 530% — according to official data made available this week, but Zanu-PF is more secure in power now than it has been since the MDC’s formation in 1999.

With the opposition deeply split, desperately weakened and undecided on key strategy, and with Mugabe still able to dole out gifts — such as the farm implements this week — Zanu-PF does not need to talk to the MDC to stay in power.

However, Mugabe has still kept an eye on sustaining somewhat shaky regional solidarity, which he needs as a buffer against Western pressure. This means that he occasionally has to be seen to be reaching out to rivals.

Mugabe’s critics say Mbeki’s mediators, who have struggled in recent weeks to tie down Mugabe’s men to meetings, must use the amendment, much more than Mugabe’s public comments, to gauge the real attitudes within his government towards the SADC push.

”This basically puts an end to Mbeki’s initiative. Zanu-PF has gone ahead and made the amendment, disregarding the fact that some of the same issues contained in the proposed amendment were under negotiation,” said Lovemore Madhuku, head of the National Constitutional Assembly, a pressure group that is pressing for broad constitutional reforms.

Nelson Chamisa, spokesperson for Morgan Tsvangirai’s faction of the MDC, said his party had hoped to negotiate an entirely new constitution, not ”cosmetic” amendments.

According to an April position paper the two MDC factions had prepared for the talks, the opposition wants an independent registrar of voters. It also wants the commission that draws up constituency boundaries be solely accountable to Parliament.

But Ndlovu says the amendments have nothing to do with the Mbeki process. ”We are going ahead with that process as government. It has no relation to the Mbeki initiative. In fact, the initiative should not cloud our state programmes.”

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