Power sharing in Zimbabwe

When Southern African Development Community (SADC) diplomats meet in South Africa on Sunday to push for a breakthrough in Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deadlock, many things will have changed since the September 15 deal.  South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, who brokered the deal, has been replaced as president and his party is in the process of an ugly split, partly as a result. Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe has regained some initiative.

It does not seem as if Mugabe or his party, ZANU-PF, are ready to yield on the key obstacles to implementing the power-sharing agreement.  Under the terms of the deal, Mugabe is to share executive power with rival Morgan Tsvangirai, who won the first round of March presidential elections but dropped out of the June run-off to protest against a campaign of violence against supporters of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).  As president, Mugabe would chair the 31-member cabinet, while as prime minister, Tsvangirai would lead a ‘Council of Ministers’ (made up of the same members as the cabinet).  Mugabe would steer policy and Tsvangirai implement it. 

However, the process has broken down over the distribution of cabinet seats.  ZANU-PF is meant to have 15, Tsvangirai’s MDC 13, and a small faction of the MDC loyal to Arthur Mutambara 3 -- giving the MDC in total a small majority to reflect its control over the House of Assembly.  However, Mugabe last month pre-emptively distributed seats in the cabinet, giving ZANU-PF control over key ministries which the MDC insists it must hold if the agreement is to move forward, including the Finance Ministry and the Interior Ministry (which controls the police).  The latter is crucial for the MDC to feel that it can eliminate violence and intimidation against its members, while the former is essential if the international community is to back the agreement and start aid flowing.

Nevertheless, SADC negotiators will come up against the reality that Mugabe’s ability to compromise is constrained by the fact that in any economic recovery scenario, key figures within ZANU-PF who have entrenched interests in the status quo will face serious hardships.  Mugabe may have calculated that with the world’s attention on the effects of the global financial crisis, sufficient pressure would not be brought to bear on the Zimbabwean situation.  Indeed, SADC leaders will be hard pressed to maintain the level of engagement needed to implement the deal.  However, with Zimbabwe’s economic crisis accelerating, and looming food shortages once again threatening livelihoods, Mugabe’s regime will begin coming under other pressures in the near term, as well.