Entering talks with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) this week, Robert Mugabe appeared to be in his weakest position ever. But he still held some strong cards, particularly the unstinting support of Zimbabwe’s security establishment.
The fortnight scheduled for the secret talks, scheduled to kick off on Thursday, looks unrealistically short given the enormous distance separating the two major participants.
Mugabe’s friends in Africa have dwindled in the wake of the violent presidential election run-off, while industrial confidence and capacity are at a historic low and famine is stalking Zimbabwe.
Some analysts argue that even the sanctions veto by Russia and China in the United Nations Security Council has weakened him, as he is now indebted to those states, which want demonstrable progress.
“Zimbabwe has to repay the debt because the United States and United Kingdom will say to Russia and China, ‘See how your client is misbehaving’,” said Zimbabwean political commentator Eldred Masunungure.
The most intense pressure will come from the rapid disintegration of Zimbabwe’s economy, an issue the MDC will exploit to the full.
“There is absolutely no point in negotiating a deal that is not acceptable to the people with money,” said Eddie Cross, a senior Tsvangirai policy adviser, this week.
The MDC knows that any agreement must be acceptable to Britain, the US and other Western countries, which want Mugabe to go.
It has pledged to avoid an “elite pact”, while insisting that any settlement must give it full executive power. An MDC insider said: “Mugabe can be ceremonial [president] if he wants, but we want full power.”
He said that the party did not want a Kenyan scenario in which the executive is split evenly between the two parties.
The source said that once the MDC was ensconced in power it would call on a range of countries to make good on their promises of economic assistance to an MDC government.
Asked how the MDC proposed to deal with the Zimbabwean military police, he said: “That’s Mugabe’s problem. He has too many people to please.”
For Mugabe the main concern is the tide of opinion in the African Union and the Southern African Development Community that the way in which Zimbabwe’s recent elections were conducted has cost him support. Cross said Mugabe wanted a settlement that would please Africa.
But his Western critics and Tsvangirai might have underestimated his resolve and the diehard stance of the Zimbabwean security establishment and his other supporters. He has tabled demands that the MDC will find hard to meet.
Land reform tops his agenda — Mugabe wants the MDC to agree that land seizures will not be reversed.
Land is a powerfully emotive issue among Africans in general and many small Zimbabwean farmers who benefited from the land grabs are anxious about their future under an MDC-led government.
He also wants the MDC to prevail on the West to lift sanctions on the Zimbabwean elite — an issue over which that party has no control. Mugabe knows that Zimbabwe’s securocrats will not accept an MDC-dominated government without his blessing.
Tsvangirai’s party has been decimated in Zimbabwe, with hundreds of its activists and MPs in jail. But his diplomatic drive while out of Zimbabwe during the elections, coupled with the widespread perception that Zanu-PF war veterans and militias were overwhelmingly responsible for election violence, have shifted African opinion in his favour.
One indication that the balance of power has shifted was his success in insisting on additional mediators in the talks. Mbeki had little option but to accept the assistance of AU commission chair Jean Ping and UN special envoy Haile Menkerios.
An advantage of this for the MDC, said one insider, was that “if things fall apart, they can act quickly and bring back the issue of sanctions”.
A recent report on the Zimbabwean elections by the Human Sciences Research Council lent weight to the MDC’s view that Mbeki’s agenda has consistently been to keep the trade union-based Tsvangirai out of power and ensure that Zanu-PF, under more moderate leadership, keeps the reins.
While the focus has mostly been on Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s game plan for the talks, scheduled to last two weeks, the leader of the other MDC faction Arthur Mutambara might punch above his weight.
Mutambara holds the balance of power in the Zimbabwean Parliament, meaning that both Mugabe and Tsvangirai will need to court his support in passing legislation and electing a parliamentary speaker.
It is already being suggested that Mutambara’s MDC will nominate its deputy president Gibson Sibanda to the speaker’s post, a move that will guarantee it the fourth most powerful post in government.
There are fundamental policy — and personal — differences between leaders of the two MDC factions. Their animosity was on display on Monday at the signing of the “memorandum of understanding”, which set the framework and agenda for the talks.
Mutambara has adopted a more conciliatory attitude to Mugabe, attending an earlier meeting with him, which Tsvangirai boycotted.
His faction supported Simba Makoni in the first presidential poll, but pledged to back Tsvangirai in his aborted run-off campaign.
Pass the salt, puppet
When Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai sat down to lunch on Monday they must have used very long spoons.
One of the key hurdles the settlement negotiations will have to surmount is the personal loathing between the two main negotiators.
Emerging from the signing ceremony, aides ushered Mugabe and Tsvangirai to the 17th floor of the Rainbow Towers hotel, where a room was prepared for the duo to lunch alone.
One can safely assume the exchange was laconic; pass the salt, keep that knife away.
Earlier they had posed for an unlikely picture. Smiling and holding hands were Mugabe, destroyer and murderer, and Tsvangirai, the white man’s dumb poodle. Not even Thabo Mbeki’s musty jokes — met with exaggerated laughter from the audience — could hide the obvious mutual revulsion, bred over a bitter 10-year power struggle.
Tsvangirai, an arm leisurely slung over the back of his chair, looked away as Mugabe walked into the conference room. Mugabe stole only the slyest of glances at his opponent as he slouched into his chair, mumbling a greeting to the leader of the other MDC faction, Arthur Mutambara.
Both leaders sulked their way through the ceremony. Clearly, neither wanted to be there; and neither looked ready to concede an inch. According to Tsvangirai this was a meeting between “the ruling party and the winning party”, and he made a point of calling Mugabe “president of Zanu-PF”, not of Zimbabwe.
Mugabe insisted the talks would only succeed if “we call off, if we haven’t done so already, all influences on ourselves from Europe and the United States, so we think for ourselves”.
The conference room was also far too small for the vast egos on display. — Jason Moyo