POLITICS-ZIMBABWE: Little Hope at SADC Summit

• by Stanley Kwenda (pretoria)
• Monday, January 26, 2009
• Inter Press Service

The emergency summit comes a week after a meeting between Zimbabwe's main political rivals failed to resolve a paralysing dispute over implementation of a power-sharing deal reached in September 2008.

The September agreement, signed by Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as well as Arthur Mutambara, leader of a smaller breakaway faction of the MDC, ran into immediate difficulties due to differences over how government posts should be distributed.

This was after President Mugabe had unilaterally gazetted ministries, convened parliament and appointed key government officials without consulting the two MDC leaders. At the core of the disagreement is the allocation of security ministries, particularly Home Affairs which SADC has proposed should be shared by Zanu-PF and MDC-Tsvangirai.

The MDC has turned down this proposal saying it favours Mugabe. The MDC also wants other key government posts, including provincial governors, permanent secretaries, ambassadors, the governor of the country's central bank and the attorney general, shared equitably among parties participating in the unity government.

The MDC has also said activists and human rights campaigners being held in jail on what it says are trumped-up charges of plotting to overthrow Mugabe should be released before it can join the unity government.

The current SADC chairman, South African President Kgalema Motlanthe and mediator Thabo Mbeki see a unity government as the key to unlocking the Zimbabwean crisis. The South African leaders however say it is up to Zimbabwe's political leaders to bring to an end the decade-long crisis.

But regional civil society activists thinks otherwise, having predicted failure of the talks even before they had started.

'It's a waste of time. They have failed before and nothing will change things. For as long as [SADC leaders] continue treating Mugabe with kid gloves, then these talks are going to fail at whatever time and place,' Patrick Bond, a University of KwaZulu-Natal Professor and human rights activist, told IPS.

Ahead of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit, civil society leaders in both Zimbabwe and South Africa met to map the way forward. Discussions centred around a push for a transitional authority, a call for fresh internationally supervised elections, regional campaigns to pressure SADC and African Union (AU) to openly condemn Mugabe's government and mobilisation of Zimbabwean masses into street protests.

On Sunday, Jan 25., unionists, gender advocates, human rights activists conducted a night vigil and protests in Pretoria. On Monday morning, the numbers of people demonstrating had fallen, particularly when compared to previous demonstrations outside similar summits. By the end of the day, most activists had retired to restaurants and bars in Pretoria and Johannesburg, waiting for the signal announcing the death of the talks.

Joy Mabenge of Institute for Democratic Alternatives for Zimbabwe (IDAZIM) told IPS that the failure of the talks might trigger long-delayed mass revolt.

'The pronouncement that the political talks are dead is likely to trigger mass protests. For now the masses are trapped and indeed arrested in false hopes of either an inclusive government or a transitional authority being consummated,' says Mabenge.

'The nation has reached a tipping point and what the ordinary people are waiting for is in historical terms the 28 June 1914 Sarajevo assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to trigger some sort of coordinated civil disobedience.'

Nixon Nyikadzino, a Zimbabwean human rights activist, told IPS that there is now a need to look beyond the talks and start mobilising the masses. 'SADC has failed, it should now refer the matter to AU but in the mean time we have to start consolidating the mass movement and ask people to exercise people power and revolt in defence of their vote.'

The National Constitutional Assembly's Maddock Chivasa also called for the people's agenda. 'Now it's time for civil society to do what we have always be calling for as NCA and mobilise people into street protests and show Mugabe that he is not the one with the critical mass. Street protests should now run parallel to whatever diplomatic process will be considered after this meeting,' Chivasa told IPS at the summit.

While political leaders defend their positions inside the talks, and civil society leaders begin to adopt more rigid attitudes, Zimbabweans will struggle to guard fragile hope in the face of a massive humanitarian crisis so clearly illustrated by the collapsed economy and a devastating cholera outbreak which has killed close to 3000 people over the last three months.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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