Heart of the Matter, Thursday 06 August

Unity agreement a problem for Zimbabwe, South Africa and SADC

Tanonoka Joseph Whande

I am quite astonished by what former South African president Thabo Mbeki said early this week.
When the Global Political Agreement that paved the way for a government of national unity was signed, it was Mbeki who got the accolades for mediating and for coming up with an arrangement that was acceptable to both cantankerous Zimbabwean political groups.

Mbeki basked in the glow of tributes and great compliments as he felt that his ‘silent diplomacy’ had been vindicated.

Even Robert Mugabe, the man who caused so much damage to Zimbabwe and  received undeserved support from Mbeki, had to concede what Mbeki had “achieved”, going as far as saying that the man was so much a master negotiator that were he (Mugabe) younger, he would ask Mbeki for tips on wooing girls.

The signing ceremony in Harare was beamed live around the world and Mbeki was hailed for his patience and mastery of negotiations.

This followed numerous false starts that resulted in Mbeki and SADC forcing Mugabe and the MDC to sign the agreement and to swear in cabinet ministers by a given date.

Since the establishment of the unity government, however, there have been serious problems.
Flaws immediately came out in the open and it became clearer and clearer that the forced agreement entrenched Mugabe at the expense of the winner, MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mbeki was compared to former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, another African who conjured up a similar disastrous agreement in Kenya.

Annan’s prescription, like that of Mbeki, rewarded the loser in an election and sort to forcibly accommodate a losing African president who had decided not to vacate the presidency.
  It has now been five months since the agreement was forced on Zimbabweans and it has become quite obvious that the agreement did not solve anything except to give space to Mugabe to catch his breath and to re-entrench his authority, which he had almost given up.
Before the agreement was signed, there were disappearances, assaults, murder, rape, corruption and civil unrest.

Today, the situation remains the same and is getting worse as Mugabe gets stronger.
Beatings continue. Farm and mine invasions are on the increase. MDC supporters are being assaulted while MDC parliamentarians are being continuously arrested on trumped up charges.
The agreement failed to solve anything, in political terms, and as things get worse for Zimbabwe, the architects of the agreement are now refusing to accept what they did.

"I didn't draft the GPA, the Zimbabweans drafted it themselves. I was of the opinion that President Mugabe should become ceremonial but it is the political parties which said no," said Mbeki."They said they can't marginalise him because he carries a particular constituency and is a significant part of the solution."

No Mugabe is nothing less than the problem not part of the solution.
Mbeki, who dismally failed to put his own imprint on the presidency of South Africa had to be recalled by his party after they noticed that he just was not up to the task and after making many blunders within both the party and government.

Anyone who followed the marathon negotiations last year knows for how long they dragged on chiefly because the MDC was refusing to have Mugabe be anything but ceremonial and for Mbeki to say today that the MDC insisted on giving more power to Mugabe is downright stupid.

Being this directionless will not help Mbeki after his dismal performance in office.
Mbeki is not alone in this deception and theft of the voting rights of the Zimbabwean people.
Upon retiring last month, Frank Chikane, who served under former president Thabo Mbeki as Director General in the office of the President of South Africa, told the media that the SADC-brokered Global Political Agreement was not the best solution to Zimbabwe’s political crisis.
Chikane, like Mbeki, is one of the notorious architects of this agreement.

“It is a transitional government,” Chikane said, “it’s not perfect. There is no perfect political solution, there is no perfect way of solving a problem but it gives Zimbabwe political parties the possibility to resolve their problems.”

Obviously, this failed to happen since the political parties are still at each other’s throats.
If Chikane knew this to be an imperfect agreement, why did he and Mbeki impose it on SADC for them to impose it on Zimbabweans?

Now, they see what their forced agreement is doing to our nation and they are saying we Zimbabweans imposed it on ourselves yet we had voted Mugabe out but Mbeki jumped in to save the loser who continues to mess up the country while, at the same time, abusing innocent citizens.
Last week, Tsvangirai went to South Africa to report Mugabe to Jacob Zuma because Mugabe, after being chaperoned by Mbeki and SADC, decided that the agreement is not worthy adhering to so he does what he pleases right under SADC’s nose.

But what can Zuma do about Mugabe? What can SADC do about Mugabe? The MDC should not have gone into this unity agreement because by so doing, they indicated that they were willing to accept less than what was due to them. They halved the people’s mandate and decided to share it with a person the people had decided to put to pasture; now SADC and South Africa cannot do anything about it, can they?

But Zuma did say that SADC and continental structures would intervene in Zimbabwe “if provisions of democracy” are compromised.

He is following the same path taken by Mbeki and is totally blind to what is transpiring in Zimbabwe. What he calls provisions of democracy were compromised from the start and continue to be violated by the day.

One wonders what these people want to happen first before they can do something about Mugabe.
Mugabe is still a problem and continues to behave with impunity, as he further consolidates his powers and frustrates his partners within the government of national unity.

There is no goodwill and no good intentions. People continue to be assaulted for their perceived sympathies for the MDC and parliamentarians are being arrested one by one in a calculated move to reduce the MDC’s parliamentary majority.

The judiciary is still heavily tainted in farvour of Mugabe. And yet Zuma applies the brakes by pretending not to see that provisions of democracy are always being compromised.

The heart of the matter is that South Africa, through Thabo Mbeki, pushed Zimbabwe into a mess and now do not know what to do with Mugabe but to continue protecting him.

Not only did Mbeki author the agreement during his efforts to protect Mugabe, he encouraged the breaking up of the MDC. Were it not for Mbeki, the smaller faction of the MDC could not have survived or given the unwarranted importance and attention it continues to receive.

It boggles my mind why human life is not at all important to African presidents. I wonder what happens to a man after he ascends to a position of power and authority. Does it really mean that Zuma and SADC do not see the distress that Mugabe continues to reign on the country, with repercussions vibrating into the region?

I fail to understand why African leaders simply protect each other even when one does the most despicable of acts.

However, while complaining to Zuma about Mugabe and his behaviour, Tsvangirai continues to say the unity government is making progress.

What is it they call progress when their supporters continue to be arrested, beaten up and when the youth militia and the army continue to be deployed to intimidate the people?

It goes without saying that the MDC has to find another way of dealing with what ZANU-PF is doing, not to run complaining to neighbours whenever Mugabe does his murderous acts.

It is time the MDC came up with alternatives to counter what Mugabe is doing. Complaining and always complaining will not get us any further than we have come. And we ain’t come too far.
What do you say? Send me your comment on tano@swradioafrica.com I think that internal solutions need to be found. South Africa and SADC are not there for us.

It is time we got serious enough about what is happening to us. So I hope that next time Mr Tsvangirai will go to the people, not to the South Africans who betrayed us and continue to mollycoddle Mugabe while he continues to cause havoc in our country with their support.

I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Thursday August 6, 2009.