It finally happened on the second weekend of September—a few weeks later than the South African mediators had hoped—on a houseboat on Lake Kariba, northern Zimbabwe. The South Africans were led by senior political figures from the ANC liberation wing. This was important, as the Zimbabwean government's position has always been that a liberation revolution was still being fought—to free the land, and to resist a globalisation that privileges the west. The breakthrough came when the Zimbabwean delegations were persuaded to drop their public posturings for private talks. This had never happened before. Concessions and agreements on both sides began to flow.
To be sure, the South Africans were slow about it—painfully so. But the hardline Blairite rhetoric—spun as racist by Mugabe—was an impediment to them too. It is harder to intervene in one's own backyard than it looks—the South Africans were polite enough to remark only in private that Europe too had found it hard to intervene in the Balkans, taking years and very great suffering before doing so. And the entire thrust of African nationalism has centred on independence from external intervention.
2008 is, however, election year—not only in Zimbabwe but in South Africa too, where phone-in radio is dominated by complaints about the 3m Zimbabwean refugees. Like illegal migrants anywhere, they take the menial jobs; when jobs are not available, they turn to crime.
The British response was obdurate. Both Gordon Brown and Mark Malloch Brown continued the hawkish Blairite line. Brown said he would boycott the December Lisbon EU/African summit if Mugabe came. David Miliband offended a representative of one of the two opposition parties, sent to sound him out, by lecturing her on the wisdom of not being taken in by Mbeki's soft diplomacy. This prompted the leader of her faction, Arthur Mutambara, publicly to rebuke the Brown government. If no engagement was possible, he asked, what future was possible? Others, such as the esteemed International Crisis Group, have thrown their weight behind the South African mediation as "the only show in town."
And this is right. For the British posture had been built around plan A: get rid of Mugabe. There was no plan B. So the longer Mugabe was successful in staying, the longer the British were found to have no plan in place to help the millions of Zimbabweans who had fallen into penury and malnutrition. The Zimbabweans are ingeniously helping themselves, but that depends on 3m of them (out of a total population of 13m) scavenging and stealing in South Africa so that they can send money home. The hundreds of thousands in Britain represent a much smaller problem to this country, but are also assiduous in sending money home.
In the absence of a British policy, Germany has stepped into the vacuum. When Angela Merkel and Thabo Mbeki met in Pretoria on 5th October, the discussions were said to have been heated. But Merkel left convinced by Mbeki that a breakthrough had been achieved—and, after technical issues are resolved, would probably be announced this December in Lisbon. She then gave a press conference in which she pointedly said that Mugabe was entitled to attend the Lisbon summit.
Not that Mbeki has it all his own way in South Africa. The day before the Merkel/Mbeki meeting, Kader Asmal, a senior ANC figure, broke ranks by likening Mugabe to Pol Pot. Mbeki knows that Asmal's views reflect a growing feeling in the ANC that Mugabe has become counterproductive to African interests. But the mood has turned not into a "dump Mugabe" attitude, but, in the words of veteran Zimbabwe editor Trevor Ncube, who has suffered much at the hands of Mugabe's regime, a feeling that it is time for an end to "megaphone diplomacy." Ncube, in the same week as Merkel's visit, argued that the future lay in negotiation with the moderates in Mugabe's party. Mugabe can be bypassed, is the message.
At this stage, the scenario looks like this: for the March 2008 Zimbabwean elections, which will be both parliamentary and presidential, Zimbabweans outside the country will be able to vote. Most of them are likely to support the opposition. Internally, the oppressive Public Order and Security Act, which curtails press freedom and gives the police power to break up political meetings, will be ameliorated. There will be a more independent electoral commission. There will be more MPs, but all must be elected—the president's power to appoint some of them will be revoked. And, importantly for Mugabe, parliament will be able to choose the next president, should he stand down; in short, he will not be saddled with Joice Mujuru, his vice-president, as successor, as the constitution now demands (the two have fallen out badly).
The South African expectation is that the opposition will not win, despite the support of the diaspora. It is divided and ineffectual, and its spirit was broken by Mugabe's thugs. So it is likely, even without rigging, that Mugabe will win both the presidency and parliament (although parliament might be a closer-run thing). Then, the scenario goes, having been validated one last time, the ageing president will stand down, his preferred successor endorsed by parliament. That successor will declare the need for a unity government and bring the leaders of both opposition parties, Arthur Mutambara and Morgan Tsvangirai, into the cabinet. Foreign direct investment will begin to flow again. The technocrats of the ruling Zanu-PF will emerge and—this last aspect being spoken of only in closely guarded privacy—the South Africans will dominate and guide, once and for all, the future of their problematic neighbour.
Whether it works like this remains to be seen. Maybe Mugabe will decide not to go—or that he doesn't like his retirement package. Maybe, at Lisbon, the Africans will fail to persuade Europe to guarantee that Mugabe will not be indicted at The Hague. Other problems remain. For instance, if the Zimbabwean diaspora is allowed to vote, that is no problem in Britain. But in South Africa, the bulk of the 3m refugees have no papers. They just crossed the border wherever and whenever they could. How these possibly decisive voters will be able to prove they are eligible remains to be seen. But they may hold the key to the future of the spoiled jewel of Africa.
