The neighbours hope foreign governments will rally generously round the
Mugabe-Tsvangirai arrangement to help the Zimbabwean people.
Yet saving the credibility of southern Africa's failed diplomacy on
Zimbabwe is not the same as saving the wretched people of Zimbabwe. The
new government, if it ever gets going, may well be no better for
Zimbabweans than the previous one was. It could be even worse,
providing a fig leaf of plausibility for Mugabe to carry on his
destructive rule.
Tsvangirai had been holding out for good reason. In months of
negotiations with Mugabe he had failed to resolve crucial issues such
as the release of political detainees and who will have power over the
police. He is now gambling that he can win the necessary concessions
before the new government is supposed to start work on February 13.
Sadly that bet may well not come off. Mugabe has a record of unyielding
stubbornness when it comes to relinquishing any real power. Years of
government thuggery against opposition supporters mean there is no
trust left between Tsvangirai's MDC and Mugabe's henchmen. The likely
outcome of any unity government is gridlock. The veneer of
power-sharing will be enough to keep the wily, 84-year-old Mugabe in
office. But it is unlikely to give Tsvangirai the authority he needs to
end the brutality and rebuild Zimbabwe's collapsed economy.
America and Britain have already said they will wait and see before
offering the new government any direct financial support. Others too
should withhold aid to the government and maintain existing sanctions
until there is clear evidence that Mugabe is changing his ways. True
power-sharing should lead quickly to the release of detainees banged up
by Mugabe's thugs, freedom of the press and an overhaul of the security
services. The central bank also needs reform; it presides over an
unofficial inflation rate that averaged 15 billion per cent last year.
These would be good measures of the unity government's intentions.
Contrary to frequent misreporting in Zimbabwe, Western sanctions are
targeted very narrowly at Mugabe and those senior Zanu (PF) politicians
who have helped bring a once-prosperous country to its knees. They have
played no part in Zimbabwe's economic ruin; that is mostly made in
Zimbabwe. Humanitarian aid should continue to flow to those United
Nations agencies and NGOs that are directly helping millions of
desperately poor and cholera-infected ordinary Zimbabweans. But a real
change in their fortunes will come only if the new government in Harare
takes the radical steps that Mugabe has spent years resisting.