Waiting for change (10-08-07)

years of political deadlock and continued economic and humanitarian decline, a realistic chance has at last begun to appear, in the past few months, to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis,” said ICG president Gareth Evans in a recent address, Zimbabwe: Waiting for Change, to the Royal Commonwealth Society, in London.
Zimbabwe has suffered a sharp downward spiral since 2000, when the ZANU-PF government embarked on its fast-track land-reform programme, which redistributed white-owned farmland to landless blacks, setting off a chain of events that has left more than a third of all Zimbabweans facing severe food shortages.
According to the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry (CZI), industrial output is at about one-third of its pre-2000 level, resulting in a negative economic growth rate of -4.4 percent. Recent data from the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) puts annual inflation above 13,000 percent, a rate the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts could reach 100,000 percent by the end of the year.
Four out of five Zimbabweans are unemployed, basic commodities such as bread, sugar and maizemeal are unobtainable, and shortages of fuel, electricity and water are a daily occurrence; social services have broken down, with hospitals and clinics operating without adequate medical equipment or supplies.
Evans said in his address that should Mugabe leave office, conditions were ripe for the introduction of a power-sharing transitional government, the establishment of a new constitution, and holding free and fair elections.
Although Mugabe was recently endorsed by ZANU-PF as its presidential candidate for combined presidential and parliamentary elections in March next year, while the ZANU-PF Women’s League has proposed installing him as president for life, influential elements in the ruling party ranks opposed to Mugabe’s continued presidency are in favour of a transitional period.
“Both factions of the divided Movement for Democratic Change [MDC] opposition, and powerful elements of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front [currently ruling] party support the concept in outline,” Evans said.
The MDC split in October 2005 after internal disagreements about whether or not to participate in the Senate elections, although the leaders of both camps, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, have publicly announced that the factions would not reunite.
A ZANU-PF camp led by a retired army general, Solomon Mujuru, husband of Joyce, one of the country’s two vice-presidents, successfully opposed moves to amend the constitution in December 2006 to harmonise presidential and parliamentary elections, but despite Mujuru’s initial success in blocking the harmonisation of elections, the constitutional amendments were passed.
A ruling party stalwart, Ibbo Mandaza, recently called on Mugabe to step down by September 2007 to prevent the economic and political crises from worsening, and another camp within ZANU-PF is led by rural amenities minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is also seen as a possible replacement for Mugabe.
The cracks in the ZANU-PF ediface have become more apparent: first with the arrest in June of several army officers alleged to have been on the brink of staging a coup, in which, state prosecutors allege, power would have been handed over to Mnangagwa.
Next, Simba Makoni, a member of the ruling party’s powerful politburo, told delegates at a workshop in South Africa in July that “a process of change” was underway in ZANU-PF. His comments drew an immediate riposte from information minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, who labelled Makoni a “sell-out”.
Evans said the growing opposition to Mugabe’s rule by ZANU-PF heavyweights was a consequence of the adverse affect on their businesses, after the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) introduced targeted sanctions against Mugabe and members of the ruling elite for alleged human rights violations.

“The economic meltdown, as well as the bite of EU and US targeted sanctions, is pushing ZANU-PF towards change, since business interests of key officials are suffering,” said Evans.
“The party is split over the succession issue, but Mugabe’s long-successful divide-and-rule tactics have started to backfire, as the two main [ZANU-PF] factions are coming together to try to prevent him from staying beyond the expiration of his present term in March 2008.”
Economic issues, discontent among underpaid police and troops, and the increasing willingness of opposition parties and civil society to protest in the streets, all increase the risk of sudden major violence