'Margin of terror' and public opinion polling in Zimbabwe

The results of the survey by the Mass Public Opinion Institute and Freedom House, Change and ‘New’ Politics in Zimbabwe, make for interesting reading. The findings of the opinion poll that involved nearly 1200 randomly selected Zimbabweans of voting age has generated animated debate both internally and externally.  This is hardly surprising. Any study that gives the world a rare glimpse into Zimbabwe’s complex political maze is greeted with fever. The Zimbabwean crisis has dominated world headlines for too long. Many continue to wonder what it will take to see change in a country that has been dominated by one man since independence in 1980.

The study is even more interesting in the context of an awkward coalition government that has defied the odds to survive three years of groin kicking acrimony between ZANU (PF) and MDC. Predictably what has dominated the news media and political chat is the survey’s finding that parliamentary support for the MDC has declined from 38% in 2010 to 20% in 2012, while that for ZANU (PF) has increased from 17% to 31% over the same period.  Acres of media space have been devoted to analyzing this statistic alone and unfortunately this has precluded a sober analysis of other variables of the study, which to me tell a different, but equally interesting story.

Paradoxically, ZANU (PF) propaganda chiefs have embraced the findings of the survey. A day after its official release The Herald newspaper, one of the party’s propaganda mouthpieces, ran a front page story on the survey, something that I never experienced in my several years as a pollster at the Mass Public Opinion Institute. This is notwithstanding the fact that the front-page coverage was followed by a muted attack of Freedom House as a ‘rightwing regime change’ agent by the same paper a few days later.

Reading through the various news articles and commentaries, it is clear that the results of the survey have meant different things to different people, even within the same political parties. On the one hand rabid ZANU (PF) defenders and MDC bashers have celebrated the results of the survey as marking the end of the MDC and the return to ZANU (PF)’s one-party dominance of Zimbabwean politics.  Sober supporters of the ZANU (PF) have read the statistics to mean that perhaps the MDC is losing its luster, thanks to corruption in MDC-run councils, absence of a sound ideological base and the disintegration of cohesion in the party. ZANU (PF) political strategists are quietly wondering whether the indigenisation and empowerment rhetoric has struck a chord with the Zimbabwean electorate.

On the other hand rabid MDC defenders and ZANU (PF) bashers have dismissed the survey findings and have wondered loudly “what has ZANU (PF) done that it would gain the support of Zimbabweans?’ The sober ones have questioned the veracity of the survey on the basis of the possibility of sampling errors given the dearth of reliable population figures on Zimbabwe. MDC political strategists are quietly wondering how the positive change that the inclusive government has brought could translate into a decline in its support and an increase in ZANU (PF)’s popularity ratings.

I fear that all of these analyses have missed one critical point, which invariably influences public opinion survey data in Zimbabwe. I argue that fear has become ingrained in the DNA of our political culture because of the preponderance of violence in our society and that the fear factor is paramount in explaining the findings of the survey.

More than 60% of MDC supporters interviewed said they had experienced threats, intimidation and harassment. Ominously, 66% of these said they had witnessed someone else being killed or injured. But this fear also transcends political boundaries as evidenced by the 32% of ZANU (PF) supporters that said they had experienced intimidation, threats and harassment. I am not sure if the researchers asked these ZANU (PF) supporters who had intimidated, harassed and threatened them. If ‘Oparation Makavhotera papi” is anything to go by, one would suspect that their own party members could have been the perpetrators. The orgy of violence in 2008 did not spare ZANU (PF) strongholds as they were punished for not having done enough to stop Morgan Tsvangirai from winning. Interestingly, about four in ten of ZANU (PF) supporters said they had witnessed someone else being killed or injured.  Again I am not sure if the researchers probed further to find who the perpetrators were.  

The most telling indicator of the fear factor is that close to half of the respondents did not want to openly declare their political affiliation. I disagree with the assertion that these are undecided voters that could go either way. I argue that Zimbabwean society is so polarised that there is no room for electoral fence sitters. These voters are decided but they are afraid of coming out. My experience of analyzing public opinion data from Zimbabwe since 2000 is that because of fear, a significant percentage of survey respondents choose not to declare their positions on politically sensitive issues, including their electoral choices. In most cases these are MDC supporters who fear a backlash. ZANU (PF) supporters hardly hide their support for their party because in most cases there are no consequences. I would therefore surmise that a majority of the 47% undeclared respondents belongs to the MDC.

While I agree that there is discernible disillusionment with the MDC’s record in the inclusive government, I disagree that this has translated into a mass exodus of its supporters to ZANU (PF), as some analysts of the survey have claimed. The problem is that the MDC is suffering from the effects of a crisis of expectation. Because of widespread disenchantment with ZANU (PF) and a collapsed economy, many Zimbabweans hoped that the MDC’s entry into the government in 2009 would make their lives better.

Without a doubt the MDC’s entry into government brought a modicum of political, economic and social stability. The survey finds out that levels of food deprivation have increasingly gone down since 2009 when 85% of respondents in a similar survey said they had gone without. By 2010 the figure had gone down to 50% and now stands at 31%. The same downward trend is recorded for shortage of clean water (49 43 and 42%), shortage of modern medicines (80 65 and 37%) and cash income (94, 91, 79%). Yet more Zimbabweans said they trusted ZANU (PF) (52%) than the MDC (39%). For me the explanation for this is that a majority of the respondents felt free to express their views on issues to do with improvements in their livelihoods but could not freely express their trust in the MDC for fear of reprisal.

While the party did a good job of bringing stability to a bartered economy, the disproportionate amount of executive power that the GPA gave to Mugabe and ZANU (PF) precluded if from fully deploying its ideas and programmes to put Zimbabwe back on a firm path to recovery and growth. This is because senior bureaucrats including permanent secretaries are aligned to ZANU (PF) and their brief since 2009 has been to set up MDC ministers for failure. ZANU (PF) is happy for the inclusive government to fail because they fear that its successes would be attributed to the MDC. 

Admittedly he MDC needs to do more in communicating this to the Zimbabwean public. At any rate Zimbabweans are aware of where real power lies in this inclusive government. And they know how that power has been abused to deny them a better life as ZANU (PF) has blocked progress on critical national processes. The constitution making exercise is a telling example. In a 2010 survey by the same organisations for instance, more than seven out of ten of respondents polled said real power resided with Mugabe.

In the final analysis it is imperative to critically look at the survey data and situate it in the current political context. Zimbabwean society is brutalized and fearful. My conclusion is that it is the ‘margin of terror’ rather than the margin of error that we should be debating. 

Time to confront Mugabe's insecurities

I read excerpts of President Mugabe’s interviews with ZTV’s Tarzan Mandizvidza and The Sunday Mail’s Nomasa Nkala with great interest.  I also listened to Mugabe’s speech in Mutare as he and his party faithfuls (or is it faithfools!) were feasting on cake and steak to celebrate 88 years of life.  For many Zimbabweans both interviews and the speech sounded all too familiar.  This was vintage Mugabe blaming everyone but himself for everything.  Never to admit failure even for his party’s poor showing in the 2008 elections, Mugabe blamed the West, blamed other African countries, blamed the MDC, blamed the factions in his own party, blamed Simba Makoni and Dumiso Dabengwa.

I hear that the festivities are continuing this weekend as the ZANU (PF) youth brigade has invaded the small town of Chipinge to celebrate Gushungo’s birthday with song and dance. Altogether 40 Zimbabwean artists will be entertaining the party faithfools. But why Chipinge, of all places? A friend at my local watering hole made an interesting observation as we watched the 8 o’clock news bulletin on ZTV a few days ago. ‘But nhai Charlie, hakusi kudenha here kewamunoita uku? Makaramba kuvigaNdabaningi Sithole paHeroes, ikozvino maakuda kutevera kuChipinge kunotamba paguva pake muchiridza madhindindi. Mapolitician makamboita sei?  I had to remind my colleague that I was just a mere political columnist and not a politician, to which he retorted, ‘what’s the difference?

Surely there is whole world of a difference. As my mentor Masipula Sithole would say, ‘Mwanangu, isu chedu kuanalyser vamwe vachitonga”. Our duty is to observe and commend while the politicians govern. But my colleague would hear none of it as he continued with tirade. ‘Politicians are very arrogant and insensitive. Just the other day you were trying to get the North Korean football team to prepare for the 2010 World Cup in Bulawayo of all places! Now you want to go and insult Musharukwa in Chipinge where we thought he was finally resting from the persecution you exposed him to when he was still breathing. What insensitivity! Ndosaka maida kuisa statue yaNkomo muBulawayo musina kuudza hama dzake’. I had to calm him down as he was getting agitated.

I thought the observation on Chipinge was incisive. Manicaland has always been a problematic province for ZANU (PF) and Mugabe. Chipinge in particular. When ZANU and ZAPU merged in 1987 to establish a de facto one party state, Chipinge resisted as ZANU (Ndonga) ‘jealously guarded its zones of autonomy’. Certainly ZANU (PF) has lost some sleep over Manicaland Province. Out of the 26 constituencies in that province, the MDC grabbed 20 of them in the 2008 General Election. Could this explain the choice of venues for Mugabe’s festivities? And will it work?

 But coming back to Mugabe’s interviews and birthday speech. I thought I managed to decode some instructive messages that need further analysis in the national interest as some of them are key to moving this country forward.  One of the key messages I deciphered from Mugabe’s interviews is that he cannot fathom a Zimbabwean nation without him as its leader. He told the party faithfools in Mutare that he was still strong enough to lead. In one of the interviews he was asked if he thought he should groom a successor. His answer was that no, this would divide the party. But Gushungo, the party is already divided. Factionalism has been a permanent feature of ZANU (PF) internal politics since time immemorial. As Tendai Biti would argue, there were factions in ZANU (PF) on the day it was formed at Enos Nkala’s house in Highfiled 1963. 

 The message that has come out clearly as Mugabe celebrates his 88^th birthday is that he wants to die in office and to him anyone who entertains hopes of taking over from him is a dreamer. Being the Machiavellian schemer that he is Mugabe has constantly played on the issue of divisions in his own party to muzzle debate on his succession.  What is clear is that he wants to lead ZANU (PF) and the nation of Zimbabwe until his death. And that is the reality we have to wotrk with.

My sense is that Mugabe does not trust anyone to guarantee him safety and security in retirement. He probably fears that whoever takes over from him will hand him over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to be tried for crimes against humanity. He is acutely aware that fingers have been pointed at him and that he might be having an indictment hanging over his head for his role in the Gukurahundi massacres. At his advanced age he has given in to paranoid delusions and he does not trust even his own lieutenants, let alone an MDC government, to guarantee him immunity from prosecution either domestically or internationally.

As I reflected on this I thought perhaps it is time we had a paradigm shift in our national discourse if we are to move forward as a country. Let me remind Zimbabweans that it is a fact of life that we are stuck with Mugabe as a country and as Prime Minister Tsvangirai has said before, the man is the problem but also forms part of the solution to our national crisis. In that sense I think it is imperative that as a nation we put aside our collective moral indignation against Mugabe and start dealing with his fears in a manner that will see us moving forward.

I argue that all processes that are aimed at resolving the Zimbabwean crisis, including SADC’s mediation, should move a gear up and focus on convincing President Mugabe to retire and allow Zimbabwe to move forward. But in order to do so Mugabe’s fears and insecurities need to be allayed. His political opponents including the MDC need to start offering him a political deal that not only guarantees him immunity from prosecution but also guarantees that he is protected from retribution and asset forfeiture. I posit this argument on the premise that Zimbabwe needs to move forward as a country. Without a doubt, more than three decades of Mugabe’s rule have brought pain and suffering to millions of Zimbabweans. The past ten years have been particularly debilitating as they have held us back as a country.

A few weeks ago Zimbabwean business executives were talking about building a $100 billion economy by 2030. This will not be achievable if Mugabe continues to hold the whole country to ransom because of his personal insecurities. It is time we addressed these insecurities so we can move forward as a country. I know that the securocrats hold real power and that they also have their collective fears of retribution and loss of ill-gotten wealth. I argue that we should cut them a deal too. Zimbabwe is bigger than a dozen or so individuals that are holding the whole country to ransom. Zimbabweans are ready to start the difficult job of rebuilding this beautiful country and in order to do so we need to get Mugabe and his henchmen out of the way.

Unmasking Chombo's sinister political agenda.

Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo can easily make it onto the list of Zimbabwe’s richest citizens if we are to believe his estranged wife Marian. She has filed for divorce from him, citing his bed hopping as having wrecked a marriage that had lasted a little over two decades. The divorce case has attracted widespread national attention, not least because it has laid bare salacious details of the minister’s ostentatious riches. He may not be in the same league as the country’s richest man, telecoms mogul Strive Masiiwa, but his net worth would make an average English Premiership footballer go green with envy.  

In the divorce papers that she has filed, Marriane claims that she and Chombo own several homes and plum pieces of land in Harare’s leafy suburbs of Mount Pleasant, Alexandra Park, Greendale, Borrowdale, among others. The bitter Marian also claims that they also own houses in South Africa. This is on top of homes in other medium and high-density suburbs of Harare. Chombo’s wife also wants a share of houses, residential and industrial stands that are scattered across the rest of the country.

Marriane also claims that the family owns a fleet of top of the range luxurious cars that include 1 Toyota Hilux truck, 2 Nissan Wolf off roaders, 4 Toyota Land Cruiser SUVs, 3 Mercedes Benzes, 1 Toyota Vigo truck, 1 Mazda BT-50 truck, a bus and 1 Nissan Hardbody. A quick check with car dealers in Harare confirms that total value of all these vehicles could easily exceed a million dollars. To top it all, Marriane also claims that the Chombo treasure dome also includes some lucrative mines and hunting safari lodges in Chiredzi, Hwange, Magunje and Chirundu. She also cites several farms located in some of the country’s prime zones.

Some of you may be asking,  ‘but Charles, what does that have to do with the price of rice in China?’ Well here is the juicy part, as Zimbabwean writer Ken Mafuka would say.  The only paying jobs that Chombo is known to have held are those of university lecturer and government minister. Zimbabwean university lecturers are some of the poorest in the world. And so are its government ministers and members of parliament. Most university lecturers struggle to acquire just one decent home and a functional motor vehicle. When I was in undergraduate school (incidentally Chombo was a lecturer at the university of Zimbabwe then) my colleagues and I used to make fun of one of our professors’ ramshackle Mazda 323. My friend Gari always used to say the professor spent more time under the car than he did riding it. The question that many have asked is how did Chombo acquire such a vast array of assets over a very short period of time. Is he such a business genius that he has managed to juggle a full time job with profitable business enterprises? How does he explain owning several homes in a country where banks can hardly finance mortgages?

Predictably Chombo has dodged all these questions. In a country where ministers’ lives are beyond public scrutiny, Chombo has found it easy to avoid answering such pesky questions. But many Zimbabweans have made the conclusion that if the minister’s wife’s claims are true, then his riches were corruptly acquired. In October 2006 the Financial Gazette newspaper reported that Chombo, in unclear circumstances, had received a top of the range Toyota Landcruiser SUV for personal use from the state-run Zimbabwe United Passengers Company (ZUPCO) acquired at a whooping cost of US$77 000. Many wondered at the time how a cash strapped state enterprise would purchase a car for a minister who has access to government vehicles. Police never investigated the allegations and no charges were laid against him.

While Chombo’s divorce case and the allocation of assets between him and his wife are matters for the courts to decide, what has irked many Zimbabweans is the minister’s disingenuousness in dealing with matters of corruption and criminal abuse of office in Zimbabwe’s local authorities. Although Zimbabweans generally abhor corruption (a majority of them are honest and hardworking people) they view Chombo’s interference in local authorities as a classical case of the kettle calling the pot black. While residents of local authorities have persistently spoken out against corruption and abuse of office by local government officials including councilors and managers, they have also detested Chombo’s malicious meddling in the affairs of most local authorities especially those that are run by the MDC.

Take the case of Harare for example. In March 2002 the residents of Harare overwhelmingly elected the MDC’s Engineer Elias Mudzuri as mayor of the capital. In no time the city began to show signs of improvement following years of dilapidation under successive ZANU (PF) run councils. Streetlights were repaired; road surfaces patched and refuse collected. Fearing that this would expose the ineptitude of previous ZANU (PF) councils, the meddlesome Chombo devised a plan to get rid of the popular Mudzuri. Firstly he blocked funds that were badly needed for improving service delivery in the city. Then he sent a rented crowd of ZANU (PF) hooligans to demonstrate against Mudzuri’s ‘incompetency”. He then fired the mayor in April 2003, replacing him with an appointed commission run by political turncoat Sekesayi Makwawara, who had served as Mudzuri’s deputy. This was to be Chombo’s strategy as he went on a nation-wide crusade to rid local authorities of MDC mayors that had been democratically elected by residents.

Chombo is at it again. Following the MDC’s takeover of almost two-thirds of the country’s local authorities in the 2008 harmonized elections, ZANU (PF) strategists have been at war trying to devise strategies of reversing the MDC’s electoral gains. They have gone on a propaganda campaign through the public media to rubbish MDC run councils as corrupt and incompetent but this has come to naught. Under ZANU (PF) management, most local authorities had been run down and were failing to provide basic services like refuse collection, water reticulation and provision of other basic social services. In the case of Harare this resulted in a cholera outbreak that claimed thousands of lives. Chombo never intervened to save these councils from collapse. Now that the MDC is in charge of most local authorities he is abusing the Local Government Act to settle political scores with the MDC.

Residents and ratepayers of local authorities need to be reminded that Chombo is no Messiah and that it is their duty and responsibility to fight corruption in their communities. Granted there have been cases of corruption and criminal abuse of office by some MDC councilors and some city mangers. But that does not give Chombo the right to fire elected councils in order to replace them with commissions that are composed of ZANU (PF) zealots.

The free flow of ideas is the hallmark of of a progressive society

The New Zimbabwe Lecture Series is a critical thinking and debating forum for ideas exchange and debate. The idea behind the series is to offer a platform for public debate on issues that confront Zimbabweans every day. The hope is that Zimbabweans can also learn from the experiences of other coutries and from time time eminent scholars and personalities are invited from abroad to share their thoughts and experiences. On Wednesday the 8^th of February the series was to host a public lecture under the theme, ‘The Global Financial Crisis and its implications for the Third World: The case of Zimbabwe’. Billed to speak were renowened Zimbabwean academic, author and publisher, Dr. Ibbo Mandza and well-known South African academic and author, Professor Patrick Bond.

As the convenors of the New Zimbabwe Lecture Series we sent out invilations and flighted advertisements in the local press for the event. Here is the full text of the invitation that we sent out to the Zimbabwean public; “There is a saying that goes, “When Europe and America sneeze, the whole world catches a cold”. As the the United States and Europe grapple with the effects of economic recesion and growth stagnation, the rest of the world including Africa have not been spared. Given the current state of globalisation and the integration of economies, the financial crisis has resulted in recession not only in the European Union and United States but across the whole globe. Markets in Asia and Africa have been adversly affected and economic growth is stuttering. Given these condtions, what are the policy options for Africa and Zimbabwe in particular? What are the policy implications and how feasible is the “Look East Policy” in the context of the emergence of China as a ‘superpower’? What lessons can Zimbabwe draw from the financial crisis and how can it safeguard itself from the economic shock? How will the financial crisis impact on internal political dynamics in Zimbabwe? For these and more questions, the public is hereby invited to this lecture”.

As is required by the police under the obnoxious Public Order and Security Act (POSA) we sent them notification more than a week ago that we would be convening this lecture. Ideally we were not even supposed to notify them as the Act only refers to political gatherings and clearly an event of this nature is not a political gathering. But because of our previous experiences where we have had the police barring public seminars on the pretext that they were not santioned, we thought it prudent to notify them. We wrote the police more than a week ago but we never heard from them until the day of the seminar when they called one of our team members to Harare Central Police Station. There he was told by one  Superitendent Gowe that the meeting would not go ahead. Gowe handed him a letter saying ‘my office regrets to inform you that it has been confirmed that you are using a false address, and hence your public lecture is not santioned’. My colleague protested that the New Zimbabwe Lecture Series was a bona fide platform that had held similar events before and that the police had been furnished with the same application details but he was was told off.

An hour before the scheduled time of the event we received a call from the hotel where we had booked space for the event informing us that they had been instructed to lock up the space. They could not confirm to us whether the people who gave the instruction were police officers but could only say they were not in police uniform. We visited the venue so we could notify people that the meeting had been cancelled. By the time we got to the hotel there was a fully loaded police truck parked in the front. Officers in full anti-riot gear had been dispatched to cordon off the hotel entrance.

We asked to address the people that had come for the seminar in order to inform that the meeting had been cancelled. The leader of the police team told us that he was under strict instruction not to let anyone address the people and warned  that if we did he would promptly arrest us. By that time a big group of people had already gathered in the hotel lobby. We defied the him and addressed the people informing them that the police had barred the meeting.

I took the leader of the group aside and I asked him how he genuinely felt about what the police were doing. I told him that this was an academic exercise and that the police had no right to stop such a meeting. He told me he saw nothing wrong with the seminar but was simply following instructions ‘from above’. “My friend, if I had a choice I would be at home with my family or maybe at the bar having a beer. But what can I do? I have been given orders and I cannot question them’, he told me.  

Later on as I drove home I felt embarassed that we had flewn a man all the way from Durban only for him to be denied an opportunity to share his ideas. Is this the Zimbabwean society we want to buid? A society that fears ideas. How can we progress as a country if we close platforms for information exchange and debate? Countries that have progressed have done so on the backdrop of robust intellectutal debate, from which new ideas emerge. Is the Zimbabwean political class so paranoid that it can send a whole truckload of police officers to bar Zimbabweans from talking about issues that confront them? The New Zimbabwe Lecture Series will be submitting another application for the same event next week. We will not rest until Zimbabweans get a genuine opportunity to search for answers to the problems that confront them every day. 

Is Mugabe running scared?

Last week I warned in this column that the African Union (AU) Summit in Addis Ababa would go down as another damp squib if the continental body did not take the opportunity to seriously reflect on lessons drawn from the Arab North revolutions and how these will impact on Africa’s democratization challenge. I also made an observation that the current crop of African leaders was caught up in a time warp and that it has failed to transform the continent into a politically stable and economically prosperous bloc that can claim its space on the international stage because it has failed to embrace change and to respect the wishes of African citizens.

Predictably there was nothing spectacular that came out of the summit, save for the electoral stalemate for the AU Commission Chairmanship.   Both incumbent Jean Ping of Gabon and aspirant Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister, failed to garner the required two-thirds majority after four rounds of voting. The joke doing the rounds in chartrooms, on websites and on the streets of Harare right now is that perhaps one of candidates should have enlisted support from Zimbabwe’s Mugabe or Kenya’s Mwai Kibaki, making the election so violent that the two candidates would have been forced to go into a power-sharing arrangement after lengthy negotiations!

A fresh election will be held in June at the next AU summit in Malawi but Ping is now out of the race as is required by the AU voting procedures. His biggest undoing is that his home country is part of the Francophone bloc. In the build up to the summit there was intense lobbying by both South Africa and Gabon and it became a battle between the Francophone and the Anglophone blocs. The SADC caucus mounted a campaign for Zuma predicated on portraying Ping as a political pawn wont to taking instructions from France. Mugabe was livid that the AU had extended an invitation to French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, a man he accused of having Colonel Gadhafi’s blood on his hands. On arrival at the Harare International Airport returning from the summit Mugabe went into another tirade, accusing the Francophone countries of being used as ‘fronts by Europe’.

South Africa’s diplomatic architects have indicated that Dlamini-Zuma will run again. But she is not a shoe-in. The problem is that everyone does not trust South Africa’s intentions on the continent.  Because of its huge economic muscle, it has acquired so much political power and clout that its critics view it as wanting to have some kind of ‘United States” big brother status over the whole continent. South Africa has and is till mediating in several conflicts on the continent, from Burundi, Ivory Coast, Sudan to Zimbabwe. Ever since he was ignominiously booted out of office, Thabo Mbeki has been traversing the length and breath of the continent trying to convince warring parties to come together. South Africa’s successes and failures have created both friends and enemies. By vying for the AU Commission Chairmanship South Africa was viewed as trying to cement its hegemony on the continent.

I doubt that Mugabe would prefer Dlamini-Zuma being the Chair of the AU. In as much as his public statements have been abhorrent of the Francophone bloc, ZANU (PF) insiders have indicated that the party would prefer not to have Dlamini-Zuma as the Chairperson of the Commission as this would be diplomatically suicidal. This is because South Africa is the SADC-appointed mediator in Zimbabwe and both the AU and SADC are the guarantors of the Global Political Agreement (GPA). ZANU (PF) has not made a secret its disappointment with Jacob Zuma’s mediation. Party ideologues like Jonathan Moyo have publicly chided Zuma’s facilitation team for ostensibly meddling in the internal affairs of the country.

Clearly ZANU (PF) misses the golden days of Mbeki’s mediation. The party has fond memories of Mbeki holding hands with Mugabe and boldly declaring that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe, even after the bloodbath of the 2008 presidential election run-off. Mbeki loathed Tsvangirai and the MDC so much that his facilitation was blatantly biased. Like Mugabe he believed that the MDC was a creation of neo-imperialist forces, that ZANU (PF) was under siege from the West and that the party of revolution needed protection. Relations between Tsvangirai and Mbeki were so cold that two hardly saw eye to eye. In his book At the Deep End, published last year, Tsvangirai blames Mbeki for the October 2005 implosion of the MDC. Tsvangirai writes, “The splinter group now invoked their man in Pretoria to put me at a disadvantage. President Thabo Mbeki had shown antipathy towards me and the cause I represented on several occasions but he was now pulled directly into the MDC’s domestic dispute…”

Zuma’s mediation has been a breath of fresh air for many Zimbabweans. Never mind the fact that he has failed to break the impasse between the parties. He has not shielded Mugabe the same way Mbeki did. Witness the manner in which Zuma’s International Relations Advisor, Lindiwe Zulu, has refused to be cowed by ZANU (PF) hardliners like Jonathan Moyo. The Livingstone Troika and Sandton Summit resolutions also attest to differences in approach between Mbeki and Zuma. There has been no ego stroking, as SADC has been forthright in ordering Mugabe to stop political violence and adhere to the principles of the GPA.

But perhaps what generated more interest for many Zimbabweans at the Addis Summit were Mugabe’s rants about an alleged Western conspiracy against Africa. He berated the AU for failing to defend Libya against NATO aggression. Mugabe lamented, “Gadhafi was killed in broad daylight, his children hunted like animals and then we rush to recognize the NTC”. I warned last week that if African leaders fail to draw lessons from Gadhafi’s experience, they risked going down the same way. What Mugabe did not care to tell his audience is that Gadhafi and his children were hunted down like animals because they treated Libya like a personal fiefdom that they could loot and plunder with reckless abandon. Never mind NATO’s intervention, the people of Libya stood up and said enough was enough.

After carefully listening to Mugabe’s statements I thought one could be forgiven for getting the impression that the octogenarian is running scared. From what, I do not know. It was almost as if he was saying ‘they are out to get me”. How else would one explain this statement? “Well, well that was Libya. Who will be next?” Does the President fear that he will be next? And why would he fear that he would be next? He seemed so angry that the AU had recognized the National Transitional Council NTC) that ousted Gadhafi and one wonders whether this fear is not generated by an inane fear of his own political opponents. Perhaps to him the NTC epitomizes the MDC and he is crying out to the AU not to recognize the MDC.  

The problem is that dictators never learn from the experiences of other dictators. Since the time of Hitler they have fallen, one by one, at the hands of their own people. But the next one always thinks he is smarter than the previous one. Today Bashar al Assad is mowing down protesting Syrians as he alleges a foreign plot to unseat him. But he will sure go down the Gadhafi route. No amount of force can defeat an idea whose time has come.