Back in 2005 Michael McFaul wrote an interesting essay entitled Transitions from Postcommunism. It’s worth reading today in the light of our collective failure to get rid of the regime in Zimbabwe.

The author cites seven important factors which led to a change in government in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. McFaul acknowledges that many other factors come into play but focuses on the following as essential:

A semi-autocratic regime
All autocratic regimes are vulnerable to collapse at some point. But which kinds of autocracies are more vulnerable than others? Some observers posit that semi-autocratic or “competitive authoritarian” regimes are more open to democratization than full-blown dictatorships, while others argue that semi-autocracies or partial democracies can actually do more to block genuine democratization by deflecting societal pressures for change.

An unpopular incumbent
A second necessary condition for democratic breakthrough in all of these countries was the falling popularity of the incumbent leader. In Serbia, polls put Milo¡seviæ’s popularity at less than 30 percent by the summer of 2000.7 In Georgia, 82 percent of respondents were saying as early as 2001 that the country was going in the wrong direction, up from 51 percent the year before. Kuchma’s approval ratings plummeted during his last year in office.

A united opposition
A united opposition—or at least the perception of one—is a third factor that appears crucial for democratic breakthrough, although the extent of unity varies widely enough across the cases that one may question its necessity as a factor. In Serbia and Ukraine, unity before the election was critical to success; in Georgia, less so.

Independent electoral-monitoring capabilities
A fourth condition critical to democratic breakthrough in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine was the ability of NGOs to provide an accurate and independent tally of the actual vote quickly after polls had closed.

A modicum of independent media
A fifth critical element in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine was the presence of independent media able to relay news about the falsified vote and to publicize mounting popular protests. For years, such media outlets and brave individual journalists had been reporting the misdeeds of semi-autocratic incumbents. At the moment of breakthrough, autonomous media remained vital in triggering change despite the incumbents’ last-ditch efforts to hang on to power.

Mobilizing the masses
A sixth critical factor for democratic breakthrough in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine was the opposition’s capacity to mobilize significant numbers of protestors to challenge the falsified electoral results.

Splits among the “guys with guns”
A seventh and final necessary condition for success is a split among the “guys with guns,” meaning the state’s military, police, and security forces. A segment of these must distance itself far enough from the incumbents to show that the option of violent repression is risky if not untenable. In all three cases such a split developed, though its size as well as the threat of violence varied from case to case.

The author rightly points out that the presence of only a few of these factors is unlikely to cause the same results. And he reminds us that “A more popular or more clever and ruthless autocrat might have been able to outmaneuver the democratic opposition. A less-organized electoral-monitoring effort in any of these three countries might not have been able to convince people to take to the streets. Smaller numbers of protestors in the streets might have led to outcomes that looked more like Tiananmen Square in 1989 than the big and peaceful wins for democratization that actually happened.”

Political analyst and commentator Moeletsi Mbeki couldn’t have given a more apt analogy of the circus surrounding the ‘diplomatic’ handling of Mugabe and his illegitimate occupation of the presidium, especially by the AU, in a television interview with Debra Patta on 3rd Degree. He alluded to Mugabe as the naughty boy in the school playground who is rude to fellow boys, rude to the prefects, as well as the teachers and headmaster. The other boys, who probably would have loved to do the same but are too scared, are often so ‘besotted’ by his pranks, they urge him on/encourage him. Most notable of these boys is South Africa, as seen during the existence of the Commonwealth, after Zimbabwe had held elections that were widely declared not free and fair. South Africa was most vocal in defending Zimbabwe from being expelled from the Commonwealth. No doubt South Africa did the same thing at the AU summit in Sham, my mistake, Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.

Moeletsi Mbeki lambasted the very concept of a GNU being recommended as the peaceful and only solution by the AU. He argues that Kenya set a really bad precedent that sought to legitimise governments that had outright been rejected by the majority, but just wouldn’t leave and would make everyone’s life hellishly miserable until they were granted ‘leeway’ to share power. Recently, the Secretary-General of Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme (RADDHO) said, “The election situation in Zimbabwe is unacceptable. What is the point of having elections in Africa, if it always ends up by a power-sharing system? The Kenyan example should not be a model for Africa.”

African governments advocating so-called GNUs ought to be ashamed of themselves as this defeats any semblance of democracy.

Moeletsi Mbeki also pointed out that the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe would likely remain unresolved for a long time because the AU, and indeed the rest of the countries in Southern Africa, remains divided over what to do with Mugabe. There are also those who continue to revere and remember him as the great statesman who did not tolerate colonial rule. Sadly, those who see him in that light are many.

Binyavanga Wainaina in an article titled Throwing fuel on a dying fire says, “Mugabe’s primary source of power becomes the power we give him. The man is bouncing around Zimbabwe with the energy of a five- year- old powered by Duracell… the New York Times will headline him. The BBC and George Bush too. Mugabe is getting the attention no African leader ever gets. He is a big deal. And this is his fuel…”

Indeed, it is the people around him that allow this circus to continue. Michela Wrong in her article How a continent missed its moment asks: “But what did the international community really expect of the AU? Any organisation that includes among its elder statesmen Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak (27 years at the helm), Gabon’s Omar Bongo (41 years) and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang (a modest 29) will have problems lecturing members on the merits of democracy, as Mugabe himself pointed out. Exactly which recent elections could they have held up as models? Kenya’s? Nigeria’s? Ethiopia’s?”

The AU dubbed the ‘dictators’ club’ is a toothless dog protecting the egotistical interests of a cruel few. We are so tired of the same rhetorical statements. Just how many more people have to die before the AU or the UN Security Council actually do something? Why is it that all the whiteheads at the AU (save for Mwanawasa) seem to concur that a GNU is the only way forward? Many justify GNU as the only route that will avoid yet more bloodshed but it just smacks of the old guard protecting personal and future self interests. Once the concept of a GNU gets adapted as normal in Africa none of those old men will relinquish power easily.

Apart from the fact that a GNU does not address the problems of Zimbabwe or acknowledge the will of the Zimbabwean people, it also further entrenches the Kenyan precedent that will mean in future, holding any election will be a ritualistic waste of time. And what a joke Africa will become.

Amidst all this is the electorate for whom decisions are being made in high places. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has masqueraded as a will-of-the-people party. The challenge for them now is explain to the people what a GNU will entail should they eventually decide to enter negotiations with Zanu PF. Failing this, many Zimbabweans will perceive it the ultimate betrayal if they just jump in head first without engaging and consulting the electorate. Nelson Chamisa, spokesperson for the MDC, says the party already has a position paper on how they want any talks to proceed. Many of us are interested in its contents.

For some of us, a GNU controlled by Mugabe simply communicates that our votes did not count, that we have no say in our own governance and that in the future democracy will never matter again. In fact, right now we do not need a GNU. We need solutions to deal with stubborn old men who won’t let go of what’s not theirs.

The Herald newspaper, Mugabe’s daily distorter, continues to publish articles suggesting that Zanu PF and the MDC are either open to, or engaged in “talks” with the current illegitimate government of Zimbabwe. I’m hoping that the leadership of the MDC isn’t naively attaching any hope or investing any energy in this particular area. As Michela Wrong rightly points out in the article below, “Zanu-PF and the MDC have been negotiating for years without any noticeable dilution of Mugabe’s powers.” What has been clearly evident over the last several years has been Mugabe’s ability to out manoeuvre the MDC at every turn. So it is with great concern that I read of Mugabe potentially giving certain MDC politicians cabinet posts. This is appeasement, pure and simple. We need a change of government in Zimbabwe not piecemeal and convenient interim measures. The other day a friend said to me that the situation in Zimbabwe calls for an extreme, not a moderate solution. All those diplomats out there might not like her suggestion one bit, but shades of Mugabe simply cannot linger on.

Here is Michela’s article for you:

How a continent missed its moment

As the UN, EU, US and Britain all piled in to cajole or browbeat the African Union into Doing the Right Thing over Zimbabwe at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh, I experienced a sudden déjà vu.

There was another occasion when commentators informed us that Africa’s leaders had finally lost patience with Robert Mugabe and were about to rap him across the knuckles. That would be the August 2007 meeting of the Southern African Development Community – at which Mugabe’s entrance triggered a standing ovation. Funny how we keep getting it wrong.

As this column was going to press, the AU had eventually decided to press for “a government of national unity”. A call for dialogue between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC is perfectly unobjectionable but Zanu-PF and the MDC have been negotiating for years without any noticeable dilution of Mugabe’s powers, and the sheer viciousness of the election was an unlikely harbinger of trust and compromise.

The AU had, in any case, already missed its moment. The time for Mugabe’s African brothers to speak forcefully was in March, when Tsvangirai won the first round of the election and officials sat on the results for five weeks. Their silence, urged on them by South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, encouraged Mugabe to wage a rearguard action. Zimbabweans paid a bloody price.

But what did the international community really expect of the AU? Any organisation that includes among its elder statesmen Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak (27 years at the helm), Gabon’s Omar Bongo (41 years) and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang (a modest 29) will have problems lecturing members on the merits of democracy, as Mugabe himself pointed out. Exactly which recent elections could they have held up as models? Kenya’s? Nigeria’s? Ethiopia’s?

Then there’s the mindset. The Organisation of African Unity, dubbed “the dictators’ club”, was consigned to history back in 2002, its members’ knee-jerk tendency to attribute their woes exclusively to colonialism, apartheid and Cold War interference supposedly buried with the title. Thanks to a generation of progressive “Renaissance” leaders, announced Mbeki, an invigorated institution would in future deliver “African solutions to African problems”.

The continent would still need western financial and technical help, of course, but the world should no longer assume Africa was incapable of policing itself. A key ingredient would be the African Peer Review Mechanism, which catered for governments to be assessed frankly by their counterparts. Six years on, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Eritrea’s Isaias Afewerki and Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi no longer look like enlightened Renaissance leaders. Or rather, theirs is the Renaissance of the Borgias and Machiavelli, not that of the Medicis and Galileo.

On the policing front, it is true that Nelson Mandela managed to negotiate a peace deal between rebels and the government in Burundi, and that an AU force successfully snuffed out a separatist movement in the Comoro Islands. But it took a British military operation to stop civil war in Sierra Leone and Somalia. AU forces have proved little more than token presences, short of equipment, manpower and political backing.

During Kenya’s election crisis in December, what was striking was the ruling party’s open contempt for Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ghana’s president, John Kufuor, two eminent Africans who flew in to mediate. It was only when the British and US governments told President Mwai Kibaki that travel bans had been drawn up and asset freezes were being prepared that it stepped back from the brink.

Zimbabwe tops the list of failures. The classic explanations for African leaders’ long indulgence of Mugabe – respect for an elder and former liberation guerrilla, irritation at being lectured by the west, a preference for quiet diplomacy – lost most of their force in the dreadful run-up to the second poll. The facelift has slipped, leaving the AU today bearing a depressing resemblance to its predecessor.

Mbeki’s grand project has been sabotaged by his inability to view events on the continent outside a narrow racial prism, and by his refusal, having publicly adopted a position, to be seen to backtrack.

As the South African president was the man who first championed the notion of “African solutions to African problems” with such passion, it is fitting he should now bear the blame for discrediting it in the eyes of the world.

It is encouraging to see that despite the challenges of this world and the hurt going on there are still people who sacrifice to save lives. On Friday night 27 June 2008, I was watching the 46664 concert live on television in celebration of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday. The concert held in London was graced by a number of international artists under the theme, ‘It’s in our hands.’

Annie Lennox is one particular artist who touched my heart in her efforts to make a difference in the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. During the concert she showed the audience a picture of a 7 year old child with full blown AIDS whose poor health was being worsened by malnutrition and lack of treatment to boost the immune system. She then showed another picture of the same child after taking treatment and following a proper diet . . . this was such a moving experience to me.

It got me thinking that if each one of us had such a selfless heart, this world could be a better place. I believe that even the smallest of gestures like helping a neighbor in need either in cash or kind means a lot to the recipient no matter how small. Echoing Madiba’s words, ‘there is still so much work in Africa’.

What upsets me is the fact that some of the challenges we face in Africa are self inflicted. For instance, to look at Zimbabwe and the way the economy has gone down and the health delivery system also deteriorating, some individuals still find time to intentionally cause physical harm to others, all in the name of politics. Surely this should be a time for those who directly or indirectly perpetrated violence during the election period to reflect on their actions and what they think they achieved.

It is time we realize that indeed, the responsibility to improve the world we live in lies in each and every one of us. Africa belongs to us Africans and it is only us who can make conscious decisions about our future.

I was proud and pleased to watch Morgan Tsvangirai on the BBC the other night speaking very clearly about what the way forward looks like to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). We’ve polled the Kubatana membership on the subject of a government of national unity and the idea is resoundingly unpopular. Tsvangirai recently said that “A government of national unity does not address the problems facing Zimbabwe or acknowledge the will of the Zimbabwean people.” Tsvangirai’s demand for a transitional agreement leading to free and fair elections is spot on. It’s the only way to go if we, the people of Zimbabwe, are to avoid a negotiated leadership imposed upon us against our will.

It’s hard going to these international summits as an un-elected president. That blasted press corps and their pesky questions.