As the Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, agreed to discuss a power-sharing
deal with the Zimbabwean government, analysts in the country warned the
opposition party not to allow itself to be coopted and then neutralised.
At an unprecedented meeting in Harare on July 21, President Robert
Mugabe and his opponents Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambare, representing
the larger and smaller factions of the MDC respectively, signed a document
setting out a framework for formal negotiations on a shared transitional
administration intended to lead the country out of its long-running political
and economic crisis.
South African president Thabo Mbeki, who has led
the mediation effort and drafted the document, attended the signing ceremony at
a hotel in Harare.
Teams of negotiators from either side will now spend
two weeks hammering out the details of a possible deal.
At this point,
no one is saying what kind of transitional authority might come out of the
talks.
Previously, Mugabe has indicated that he sees himself in charge
of a government of national unity, to which he would appoint some opposition
politicians.
Tsvangirai, meanwhile, has insisted that he should head the
interim body, on the grounds that he won more votes in the first-round
presidential election held on March 29. He pulled out of the June 27 run-off,
citing mounting political violence against his supporters. Mugabe proceeded to
stand unopposed, and was duly declared the winner.
If the power-sharing
deal comes off at all, the question is just how equal the relationship will be.
Analysts in Zimbabwe recall the unhappy experience of another opposition
force in a different era which was intimidated, subsumed and then effectively
done away with by Mugabe’s ZANU party.
Joshua Nkomo’s PF- ZAPU emerged as
a rival to Mugabe soon after Zimbabwe became independent in 1980.
Citing
the current political violence directed against the MDC, analysts who spoke to
IWPR said they believe Mugabe is now using the same strategy he used to bring
the late Nkomo under his control – first violence to weaken his opponent, and
later an unequal division of power.
Maxwell Mkandla, a veteran of
PF-ZAPU’s armed wing, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army, ZIPRA, recalled
the military offensive that Mugabe launched to eliminate Nkomo’s support base in
the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces in the first half of the Eighties.
Accounts of the number of dead vary, but at least 10,000 people are believed to
have died in Operation Gukurahundi.
A badly battered PF-ZAPU was then
forced to sign up to a unification deal with ZANU in December 1987, creating the
present ZANU-PF, still entirely dominated by Mugabe’s people. Nkomo was
appointed vice-president of Zimbabwe and held the post until his death in 1999,
but wielded little real power.
Speaking of the current situation,
Mkandla, who now heads the Liberators’ Platform group in Matabeleland, said,
“It’s reminiscent of the Gukurahundi. The only difference now is that the
violence is directed at his own people for voting for Tsvangirai, but the
tactics are the same.”
Mkandla warned the MDC to be wary of Mugabe’s
apparent willingness to talk.
Eldred Masunungure, a politics lecturer at
the University of Zimbabwe, agreed that “the parallels [with what happened to
PF-ZAPU] are there, and very close”.
“ZANU-PF has resorted to using the
powers of the incumbent for leverage in the intra-party talks. What’s going on
in terms of the security situation is typical of what happened in Matabeleland
and the Midlands during the late 1980s,” he said.
Violence which the MDC
says left over 100 of its sympathisers dead before the June 27 ballot and at
least 20 since then is, according to Masunungure, an attempt to force Tsvangirai
to the negotiating table, just as Gukurahundi did to Nkomo.
Analysts also
draw comparisons between the decimation of PF-ZAPU’s party infrastructures in
its heartland provinces in the Eighties and the current campaign of violence,
which many say has focused particularly on rooting out MDC activists from areas
traditionally seen as ZANU-PF strongholds, where the opposition scored surprise
wins in the March polls.
Gorden Moyo, executive director of the Bulawayo
Agenda group, agrees that Mugabe’s tactics are similar to those he unleashed in
the Eighties. But he insists that Tsvangirai and his MDC faction are well aware
of the pitfalls, and will take care to avoid them.
“Tsvangirai has tried
to behave differently. The MDC is trying very hard not to be ensnared by
ZANU-PF, because ZANU-PF wants history to repeat itself,” said Moyo. “ZANU-PF’s
strategy is, and has always been, to use [its experience with] ZAPU as a model.”
By contrast, said Moyo, the MDC is prudently setting conditions for a
future deal. Tsvangirai has said he will not sign anything until the violence
against his supporters stops, and unless the mediation team is expanded to
include an envoy from the African Union.
Mbeki is acting under a mandate
from the Southern African Development Community, a grouping of regional states,
but the MDC suspects him of being too close to Mugabe to act as a truly honest
broker.
Now the MDC is “refusing to walk into the lions’ den willingly”,
said Moyo, urging the party to “continue to insist on the expansion of the
mediation team”.
On July 18, Mbeki met the United Nations special envoy
to Zimbabwe Haile Menkerios and the chairman of the African Union’s commission,
Jean Ping. According to the AFP news agency, they agreed that while Mbeki’s team
would continue to lead on mediation, it would work more closely with the UN and
African Union, and a new joint body would be set up to monitor progress.
Jabu Shoko is the pseudonym of a reporter in
Harare.