Africa

Whatever happens with the ongoing negotiation impasse in Zimbabwe, there are social realities that no agreement will be able to reconcile. Even if the process of forging a unity government proves successful, that will mark a beginning of a long slog, not a triumphal endpoint. Hunger is rampant throughout the country with the food crisis expected to grow worse. And inflation continues to spiral unabated even as the government continues to pursue gimmicky fiscal policies.

Robert Mugabe is strangely optimistic that there will be a resolution by week’s end, but he is hardly a reliable broker in all of this, and one imagines that his optimism (and hints about opening up Zimbabwe’s notoriously closed media culture) is largely tied to his hope that the Western nations will lift sanctions. Mugabe has continued to be the chief impediment to political progress. There is no real reason to believe that anything has changed on that front in the last few days.

Brief comments about three separate but interconnected stories:

I am not the only one who wonders if Jacob Zuma might not have overplayed his hand and created a situation the unintended consequences of which might be to prevent him from taking over as South Africa’s president in 2009.  Patrick Laurence speculates similarly in a piece in the Star. Given the controversy that swirls around Zuma , the discontented cadres allied with Mbeki, the wariness of many who see a fractured ANC, and the opportunity that Kgalema Motlanthe has before him, do not be surprised if Zuma’s gambit backfires and spectacularly so.

And while those who still maintain power can deny the depth of the ANC’s divisions, do not be fooled by such whistling past the graveyard. Those divisions are real, they are deep, and they will not easily be reconciled. Expect the rumblings of the formation of a breakaway party to grow louder in the months to come.  And if the formation of a new party comes to pass, it will be yet another outcome for which Jacob Zuma and his supporters will have proved to be woefully unprepared.

Finally, to calm the shaken nerves of investors Trevor Manuel has announced that there will be little change in South Africa’s macroeconomic policies. Which is to say that the new dispensation will almost surely find that nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki embraced the fundamental tenets of free market capitalism for very sensible and pragmatic reasons. There is ample room for disagreement about the nature of South Africa’s economy, and simply prattling on about the wonders of the market provides no panacea. But those idealists and ideologues advocating fantastical solutions in which South Africa will somehow turn its back on the fundamental tenets of the market economy will be in for a rude awakening.

Jacob Zuma has won his power play against Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki resigned from office unpopular and largely unlamented, destined to go down as a disappointment, if not a failure, especially after the heady years of Nelson Mandela,  years for which, ironically enough, Mbeki was indispensible. Soon enough Zuma will slide into what he now surely sees as his rightful position as president of South Africa.

Or will he? Wouldn’t it be an irony if Zuma’s power play, coming as it did so late in Mbeki’s presidency, had the unintended consequence of delaying or even scuttling Zuma’s ascension? After all, what if Kgalema Motlanthe does a good job during these interim months? What if he can unite the ANC, calm skittish investors, and restore normalcy to the country’s politics? Motlanthe kept himself out of the power struggle between the ANC’s two titans. Yet one can assume that his own ambitions never stopped at the deputy presidency and that his ultimate goal is not being realized as a space filler for Zuma. In short, Motlanthe may like the new seat in which he finds himself. 

Meanwhile, Zuma’s biggest strength was always embodied far less in who he is or what he stands for than in who he is not. Which is to say that lots of people projected their hopes and dreams on Zuma largely because he was not Thabo Mbeki. But now Zuma’s baggage will remain front and center while Motlanthe will garner the fruits of incumbency, however peculiarly gained, and may himself benefit from who is is not, in this case because he is not Mbeki, to be sure, but also because he is not Zuma.

Jacob Zuma wanted Thabo Mbeki out of office. He got his wish. But perhaps he should have been careful what he wished for, because Kgalama Motlanthe may well usurp what Zuma for so long assumed was his. It will be quite the irony of fate if Zuma and his allies see what they assumed was their entitled inheritance slip out of their hands because they decided they could no longer live with Thabo Mbeki for another few months.

The Foreign Policy Association has published my latest piece, “A Tale of Two Countries: Change and Crisis in Zimbabwe and South Africa.” Writing commentary on volatile events taking place in real time is always fraught with peril, and in this case I wish I had continued my consistently more pessimistic outlook on Zimbabwe, but on the whole I hope it says something about this historic moment in both countries.

The Foreign Policy Association has published my latest piece, “A Tale of Two Countries: Change and Crisis in Zimbabwe and South Africa.” Writing commentary on volatile events taking place in real time is always fraught with peril, and in this case I wish I had continued my consistently more pessimistic outlook on Zimbabwe, but on the whole I hope it says something about this historic moment in both countries.

[Morgan Tsvangirai, seated, and Robert Mugabe when it seemed an agreement might be at hand. Times of London.] 

In a move that should surprise absolutely no one, the Zimbabwe negotiations have fallen apart and just about all of the blame belongs on the shoulders of Robert Mugabe. It was only a matter of time. The world had largely turned its focus away from Zimbabwe and Thabo Mbeki’s resignation in South Africa provided its own distractions. Mugabe has almost certainly never been committed to reconciliation and has likely been biding his time until he could seize control again. Perhaps the principals will find a way back to the negotiating tables, but the odds of a true power-sharing agreement coming to pass seem long.

It appears official. South Africa’s Parliament has chosen Kgalema Motlanthe as interim president to replace President Thabo Mbeki. Motlanthe, who spent a decade on Robben Island and who has a background in labor union politics will likely have as his main responsibility the healing of divisions, though the wounds might simply be too deep. The reality is that the ANC is profoundly split and the current state of the party (the current leadership of which is, in the words of one observer, “a motley crew of know-it-alls”) is likely to have historic ramifications.

Some in the party continue to try to paper over the crisis. Jacob Zuma has argued that there is “no need to panic” and argues that there is “nothing extraordinary” about the resignations of Mbeki and a third of the country’s cabinet, which beggars the question of what Zuma would categorize as  “extraordinary” is the current circumstances do not meet his standard. But then it is in Zuma’s interest for this to pass as quickly as possible, for this transition to look like a normal turn of events, and for the ANC to be able to claim that it will persevere and prosper.

Others are not quite so sanguine. Certainly Mbeki is not without his critics despite the way that he stepped down with little fuss. ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has declared that Mbeki’s surprise announcement of the resignation of so many of his cabinet ministers was a “dangerous mistake” that fueled the economic instability that followed.

And the opposition parties, most notably the Democratic Alliance, sees mostly silver lining where so many see nothing but dark cloud cover. And from a strictly political vantage point, why not? Chaos within the ANC and a potential irreconcilable break within the party will only redound to the benefit of smaller parties, and particularly the DA.  Prominent members of the DA want an immediate election, their rationale being that Motlanthe will not have been elected by the citizenry. Surely the DA knows that an election now or an election in April will place them no closer to the presidency, but it might well gain them seats in Parliament and thus more concrete leverage.

Expect much more of this jockeying for position as the days, weeks, and months pass. It is unlikely that things are going to get less complicated with the passage of time.

The chaos and violence in Somalia continues to intensify. Dozens died in the shelling of a public market in Mogadishu on Monday and more than 100 in total have been killed in scattered fighting in the capital in what observers are proclaiming to be the worst fighting in Somalia in months as Islamist insurgents seek to impose their will on whatever remains of the country, which has operated effectively without a government for years. Thousands more have fled the region and hospitals are filled well beyond capacity. Of all of the intractable situations on earth, Somalia’s might be the most insurmountable. It is hard to begin even to conceptualize a solution to that country’s ruptures.

West African states have gotten mixed results in the latest corruption report card from Transparency International:

Cape Verde, Ghana, Mali, Benin, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria, Togo, and Liberia, improved their ranks, with Benin, Nigeria and Togo making significant gains.

Falling this year were Senegal, Gabon, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Guinea, with Senegal registering the steepest drop.

Gambia’s rank of 158 [of 180 countries surveyed] did not change.

It is difficult to discern what to make of all of this. About half of the countries improved, half got worse. Those countries making progress should continue to be aware of progress on this front, while those lagging behind need to work from within (and be encouraged from without) to become more transparent and to fight corruption.

South Africa’s political foundation continues to rattle as the result of the ANC National Executive Council’s decision to request Thabo Mbeki’s resignation.  Numerous cabinet members have resigned, including, as promised, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and unexpectedly, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. Manuel has kept open the possibility that he would return under a new dispensation, but that has not reassured the economic community within or outside of South Africa, for whom the latest chaos has shaken confidence, leading financial markets to plummet.

Meanwhile, even as Jacob Zuma perfunctorily tries to make nice and the Democratic Alliance’s Helen Zille praises Mbeki for the dignity with which he has handled recent events, Mbeki plans to go ahead and challenge the court pronouncement that got him into this mess to begin with (or, to be more precise, that provided the excuse for his foes to go after him at this time). There is irony in Mbeki’s challenge in that Mbeki is using some of the exact same language Zuma had used in going after Mbeki to defend himself from those same charges.  A number of MP’s are supporting Mbeki’s challenge, yet again revealing the depths of the fissures within the ruling party.

Adding yet another bizarre twist, Thabo Mbeki’s mother, Epainette, has talked about formalizing the split within the ANC by forming a breakaway party. Expect such talk to manifest itself as more than idle chatter in the next few days and weeks.