The Southern African Development Community (SADC) initiative to promote a negotiated political solution in Zimbabwe offers the only realistic way out of the current crisis, and the international community must back it, the International Crisis Group says in a report published today.
Western sanctions have proven "largely symbolic," the report adds, and British and American condemnations of President Robert Mugabe are, "if anything, counterproductive because they help [him] claim he is the victim of neo-colonial ambitions."
However, the SADC initiative is "fragile," and the organization is beset by internal differences over how hard to press Mugabe to retire. The SADC needs to resolve these differences, and the international community should give the SADC its full support.
The International Crisis Group (ICG), based in Brussels, is an international non-governmental organisation which aims to prevent and resolve conflict through local analysis of problems and high-level advocacy. Its trustees include a wide range of prominent figures, mostly Europeans and Americans, but number among them a few Africans such as former president Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique.
Today's report says that Zimbabwe is closer than ever to collapse, with inflation running at between 7,600 and 13,000 percent, with four out of five people in a population of 12 million living below the poverty line and a quarter having fled the country.
The country's rulers need a "rescue package" if they are to contine to provide for their supporters and shore up the economy, it adds. This gives the SADC initiative "crucial leverage, if SADC is willing to use it."
The report concludes that SADC should use its economic leverage, making the provision of a recovery package conditional upon the government taking steps leading to free and fair elections. "If they act decisively, SADC's leaders can prove that 'African solutions to African problems' is indeed a viable concept, not merely rhetoric with which to forestall unwanted Western interference."
