Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deal was hailed as a success of regional diplomacy on Friday, but the animosity between President Robert Mugabe and the opposition led some analysts to fear the agreement is fragile.
”The devil is always in the detail, but I doubt if [opposition leader] Morgan Tsvangirai was going to sign if he was not happy,” Charles Mangongera, a Harare political analyst, said.
”We have to look at the deal as the best opportunity to get Zimbabwe out of this crisis,” he added.
However, Mangongera said he was worried about the reaction of Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party, in power since 1980, to the agreement.
”My major fear is that there are a lot of people, especially in Zanu-PF, who would want to throw spanners into this deal as they have a lot to lose,” he explained.
The intensive negotiations on power sharing, which started in late July after pressure from Southern African leaders who feared the crisis could destabilise the region, ended on Thursday with a deal on a unity government.
The details of the new power-sharing government and who holds what power will only be made public on Monday after a formal signing ceremony in Harare, with regional and international leaders keenly awaiting specifics.
Sources close the talks say the deal is a balanced agreement that reflects Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) win in the March parliamentary elections.
Veteran president Mugabe, who has spent 28 of his 84 years at the helm of the country, will keep the title of head of state but will have to share executive power with Tsvangirai, who will take up a newly created prime minister’s post, the sources said.
The two men will share the power to appoint ministers and set policies. The president will still head the Cabinet, but Tsvangirai will chair a new council of ministers that controls the implementation of government policies, according to the sources.
‘Positive development’
”It’s clearly a positive political development which has the potential of breaking the protracted crisis that had come to characterise Zimbabwe,” Eldred Masunungure, a political scientist from the University of Zimbabwe, said.
”It signals a move from the vicious cycle, but I am deliberately avoiding premature celebration because we are dealing with deeply entrenched interests and hostilities,” he warned.
In South Africa, the deal was mainly seen as a victory of regional diplomacy.
”We have seen African mediators brokering peace and stability solutions in African conflicts like in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire and other places. This is another example of that,” Olmo Von Meijenfeldt, an analyst from the Institute of Democracy in South Africa, said.
The deal, brokered by South African President Thabo Mbeki amid increasing pressure from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc, is a ”fantastic achievement” for both, the analyst added.
”The deal will change perception about African-led mediation,” Meijenfeldt said.
The same sentiments were expressed by professor Shadrack Gutto at the University of South Africa’s Centre for African Renaissance.
”Mbeki’s mediation efforts must be praised,” Gutto said.
The deal allows the region to breathe a sigh of relief, the analyst said.
Zimbabwe’s dire economic crisis ”saw the citizens of Zimbabwe flocking to neighbouring countries in great numbers, causing an economical strain to the entire SADC region”, Gutto explained.
”The deal shows that rival political parties realised that solving the country’s crisis could not be done single-handedly,” he added. — AFP
