While everyone is anxious to see the Zimbabwe negotiations succeed in bringing relief to the long-suffering people of that country, it is nonetheless galling that the process should be taking place at all. For it is sending a terrible message to tyrants everywhere.

It is telling them that when you face defeat in an election, the thing to do is to launch mayhem in your country, beating and butchering and bludgeoning your own people until horrified peacekeepers come hurrying to the scene to stop the carnage and you can then negotiate an ongoing role for yourself in the power structure.

Sparks is right. But all along those of us observing the sad situation in Zimbabwe have known that we cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.  These negotiations were never the ideal path. We all wish that in a free and fair election Morgan Tsvangirai had been recognized as the clear winner and he would be in the process of governing and bringing Zimbabwe back from the abyss. But we do not inhabit that ideal world, we live in our very real, very messy one. Sparks recognizes as much, but still points out numerous failings within that real world context over the last few months.

Instability on Africa’s horn has a tremendous ripple effect on global politics. Somalia is ripe for not only regional destabilization and for this sort of piracy but also for radicals of all stripes, including radical Islamists.

Mwanawasa had become one of the most vocal critics of Robert Mugabe in recent years, and one of the few African leaders willing to speak out about the madness unfurling south of the Zambesi. As head of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) had pushed for negotiations in the wake of the election madness that Mugabe had wrought.  

[Crossposted at dcat.]

Morgan Tsvangirai continues to strike a deserved pose of integrity and honor. He continues to speak out against the country’s humanitarian crisis and to insist that any agreement that he and the other parties to the negotiations reach represents the will of the people. This insistence may well have led to the talk about a deal that excluded his (overwhelming majority) wing of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). But any deal that lacked Tsvangirai’s involvement would have been an utter farce. Tsvangirai also continues to be the consummate politician, asserting that there is no deadlock and that he will continue to work toward a resolution.

Thabo Mbeki too is confident that a deal will eventually be struck, though whether his optimism represents whistling past the graveyard remains to be seen. It is certainly in his interest for the sides to come to an agreement that will in turn make Mbeki appear to be a statesman on an issue for which he has been rightly pilloried for ranging from feckless to ineffectual to diffident hopelessly biased toward Mugabe.

So stay tuned. Continue to watch and to hope. I suspect that this story will still be ongoing when I return from a trip this weekend.

No country embodies the dual-edged sword that is the so-called “oil curse” more than Nigeria. And arguably no country’s oil industry is linked in the mind with violence more than Nigeria’s. Furthermore, countries have waged war over less than a potentially oil-abundant swath of land. If the agreement holds, this will qualify as a significant development.