Africa

Whatever progress or lack threof has been made in Zimbabwe’s politicl negotiatons, the country’s economic crisis continues unabated. The inflation rate, cartoonish for years, is now estimated to be (and estimates are really al that are plausible when the numbers get this high this fast) an eye-poppingly incomprehensible 231-million percent. That is 231,000,000% for those of you counting at home.

One of the unquestionable triumphs of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe before things fell apart was his education policies. The envy of Africa, Zimbabwe’s educational system was an area that Mugabe chose to emphasize to counteract the malign neglect of the Ian Smith years. Thus it is doubly tragic that the education system has for all intents and purposes collapsed and rebuidling it will require more than tenuous political reconciliation.

Even as the hope for successful negotiations in Zimbabwe continue to fade away as the sides remain far apart, both Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change are increasingly fraught with dissent from within as to whether power sharing is even desirable. More ominously, there are signs that some of the opposition is pretty rabid. The ZANU-PF divisions are most worrisome because Mugabe has never seemed especially committed to the negotiating process and his ZANU-PF henchmen have most often been the source of the country’s worst political violence in recent years.

All of this happens against a backdrop of economic catastrophe that has seriously diminished the reach and extent of the media. Analysts have described Zimbabwe as going through an “information dark age.” Of course this cuts several ways — while the lack of access to media would under ordinary circumstances be alarming, since so much of the media is controlled by the state, the de facto news blackout conditions undercut Mugabe’s propaganda machine.  If negotiations fall apart, and no one is able to hear it, does it make a sound?

Some of Robert Mugabe’s avaricious henchmen realize that they had better get while the getting is good. Invasions of white-owned farms appear to be on the upswing, presumably because a legitimate power-sharing agreement will bring with it the end to the free lunch for that tiny minority that has enriched itself through its connections with government power.  

Zimbabweans have seen so much over the years that wariness comes more naturally to most of them than optimism. IRIN reports on the short joyride from joy to cynicism that characterizes Zimbabwe as the negotiations for a unity government that even if successful will be a long time in alleviating the ZANU-PF-imposed suffering of the masses. There will be little hope without a settlement but even if the sides manage to break the stalemate over the composition of the cabinet it is difficult to see a short-term future with much upside. Stability and prosperity will still be a long time in coming.  

The mood about the negotiations in Zimbabwe whiplashes between blinkered optimism and dire pessimism almost daily. The latest is that the negotiations are dead in the water with the sticking point continuing to be the composition of the cabinet. Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF continue to deny that stalemate has set in, but Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC believe the opposite. So far banking on MDC interpretations has proven wiser than buying what Mugabe has been selling.

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.

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.