Nothing occurs overnight, and Zimbabwe will see a gradual change. There are many vested interests that need to be rearranged and accommodated. But Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai's agreement to form a coalition government in early September was momentous nonetheless. The separation of a prime ministership from the presidency, with each sharing elements of executive power, and a careful system of party representation in a variety of government organs, was a compromise like the one reached in Kenya in early 2008. But it was different in that Mugabe has never before shared power, and had sworn not to.
It had been a long time coming. The seeds were sown not only by the opposition, but within Mugabe's Zanu-PF itself. In the first electoral round of 2008, Simba Makoni, one of Mugabe's most successful former ministers, stood against him and took critical votes away, allowing Morgan Tsvangirai to dominate the polls. A species of "Zanu-PF-lite" have long seen the writing on the wall for Mugabe.
Even while vigorously defending his steal of the second election in June this year, Mugabe knew he had to convince his own party's central committee, meeting in September, to get behind him. As it turned out, it was a deadline for Thabo Mbeki as well. Just as Mbeki finally brokered an agreement between Zimbabwe's warring factions, South African courts threw out corruption charges against his rival Jacob Zuma and criticised Mbeki for a politically-directed prosecution. Mbeki may have salvaged some international pride, but his Zimbabwean triumph was also the start date for a short lame-duck endgame to his presidency, culminating in his resignation on 21st September, less than a week later. While his immediate successor, Kgalema Motlanthe, will urge Mbeki to continue with his Zimbabwean mediation, he will also push the Zuma line (which is much less tolerant of Zanu-PF) in preparation for a Zuma presidency.
A more powerful and critical Jacob Zuma was not what Mugabe needed, and he now probably wishes he had accepted the September 2007 power-sharing deal brokered by one of Mbeki's key ministers on Lake Kariba. Morgan Tsvangirai would have been just a vice president. At that stage, Tsvangirai and his MDC were very uncertain about their electoral prospects and seriously contemplated the South African package. Mugabe did not.
Mbeki's quiet diplomacy may have yielded results in the end, but he never put the boot in at critical moments. Just after the first electoral round of 2008, when Mugabe knew he had lost and was briefly inclined to accept defeat, there was a window of opportunity at the meeting of his politburo—before the hardliners turned the tide—when Mbeki could have insisted that Tsvangirai be declared president. Everyone knew Tsvangirai had won more than 50 per cent and all the protracted "counting" was simply to massage the figures down in a credible manner.
Now that the compromise deal has finally been accepted, can the old foes, Mugabe and Tsvangirai, make it work? The day after the deal was announced, I met with a former British high commissioner to Zimbabwe. We agreed that all the talk of whether Mugabe might sabotage the deal from within was misplaced. The real question is whether Tsvangirai has the skills to deliver. He can win the game of internal politics if he is well-advised and gets his timing right—and to help him in this, he must also win back key allies who deserted him into a splinter-MDC led by Arthur Mutambara. And he has got to deliver, particularly on stabilising the economy, without taking away too much from the Zanu-PF interest groups who have enriched themselves from exactly the sort of instability the country is now gripped by.
Tsvangirai was advised throughout the talks by Kenya's Odinga. But while Kenya is politically stable, its huge array of compromise ministries has led to gridlock and inefficiency. It will be a struggle for Zimbabwe's politics not to go the same way.
Tsvangirai's first public statement, to reassure an uneasy Mugabe, was masterly. He appeared on international television assuring Mugabe that he had a place and making what might be seen as a mild criticism of the west for having concentrated so much on Mugabe alone.
The west must now put aside its own almost visceral antipathy towards Mugabe and put money behind Tsvangirai. It can't repeat Mbeki's mistake of taking sides (based, in his case, on his distaste for Tsvangirai's early naivety). What we have is a spectacularly clumsy but unavoidable compromise. Manoeuvres must take place within the new structure. The time for cracking heads is over. And Tsvangirai no longer has to wait for his head to be cracked open without any right of retaliation. The fact that the two sides are now equal within one government means the game of chess is now being played on one board.
As Mbeki departs, Tsvangirai will briefly ponder what might have been—vice president a year ago, almost president in March this year, prime minister now. But he has something which he can and must make work. Mugabe will ponder how tired he is from the struggle—just days before the negotiations ended, he even said himself that he had nowhere else to go. With immunities almost certain to be granted to his military hardliners, these men will no longer pressure him to defend their interests against Tsvangirai's ascendancy. There will be little left for him, perhaps nothing except rhetoric. Perhaps a year from now a shadow of a president will sit alongside an embattled prime minister struggling to improve his country. Nothing will be easy for either man, but Zimbabwe was never going to be an easy country to fix.
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