One hundred days of solitude
I’ve just finished reading Chenjerai Hove’s opinion piece in this week’s Mail & Guardian: A Zimbabwean arrogantocracy.
Hove describes the Global Political Agreement between Zanu PF and the two MDC formations as an experiment with three scientists, one of whom “is discovered to have poured sand and dust into the test tubes.” He then proceeds to starkly outline the variety of ways in which Zanu PF cannot be judged to have entered this power sharing agreement in good faith, and why it should not be trusted. He cites the financial and power interests of Mugabe’s inner circle, and explains why they would never willingly hand over real control of the country to the MDC.
The allocation of ministries tells it all: Soft and troublesome ministries to the MDC and powerful ones to Mugabe’s team. As an election strategy, Mugabe made the MDC run ministries in which it is likely to antagonise its support base: labour unions, women’s groups, human rights activists and lawyers, medical unions, students and teachers.
And indeed, the allocation of ministries does sum things up very clearly. It is a manifestation of the MDC’s challenge of “responsibility without authority,” and already one can see the cracks showing: Teachers threatening to strike for higher wages, the MDC scrambling to find more money to pay them better, tensions between civil society and government over the Constitutional reform process, MDC MPs who continue to face harassment, arrest and trial over spurious allegations, increasing frustration from high density residents who are still without power and water in their homes and suburbs.
And yet, for all the flaws he outlines, Hove seems to think the current deal is the country’s best hope. He concludes:
One hundred days in the office of solitude, not years, and the jittery Zimbabweans hope the experiment will not fail and lead to the catastrophic break-up of the state.
One of our SMS subscribers recently sent us a message that puts things much more plainly. “GNU is not working for real. MDC must pull out.”
Tuesday, July 7th 2009 at 10:47 am
The article written by Chenjerai Hove was well written. Given what we are now finding out as a result of this uncompleted GPA are quite horrific. ZanuPF have taken Zimbabwe almost back to the dark ages and they had no option but to try and legitimise the state or total collapse was imminent. In fact, we are not out of the woods yet and it is going to take a while to fix the mess.
Zanupf, of course, will do their utmost not to co-operate. They will remain beligerate to the end. Zimbabweans must become more vigilant and use whatever space there is to weaken zanupf. zanupf’s phylosophy is “power at ALL costs”. This means that for for Zimbabwe to achieve full democracy in every respect, zanupf would need to reform or be demoloished. At this point in time, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that zanupf is prepared to change. Their behaviour since the inception of the GNU has been shocking to say the least.
Zanupf relies in the fact that most Zimbabweans are too fearful to revolt. At this stage in time, they are correct. Looking at recent events in Iran, one would think that Zimbabweans would learn some lessons but sadly this is not to be.