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South Africa: Country Suffers in Total Paralysis
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
ANALYSIS
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Dumisani Muleya
Johannesburg
SINCE Zimbabwe's recent elections, the country has lurched from a protracted political and economic crisis to paralysis. Everything -- the politics, economy, the social fabric -- is dysfunctional.
Frantic diplomatic efforts are being made to resolve the situation but nothing seems to be working. Political paralysis has set in.
Presdient Robert Mugabe will be bitterly disappointed if he thinks digging in will help him to hang on to power for ever. His dream of being president for life is in tatters. Despite his grandstanding, there will be no change in the situation, except for the worse. Mugabe is now ruling by diktat because he has no popular mandate. At best, Zimbabwe has a constitutional vacuum, at worst it has an illegitimate ruler.
Legally, there is no parliament or cabinet in Zimbabwe -- there is just Mugabe and his surrogates ruling on their own. Mugabe dissolved parliament and cabinet before the elections, but now claims to have reconstituted his cabinet to cover up his rule by fiat.
Whatever he says, the cycle of nothingness that has existed since March 29 will continue. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is also getting into a state of paralysis. After defeating Mugabe and his ruling Zanu (PF), the MDC seems to have run out of ideas.
The trouble is that the opposition has no serious leverage to change the situation. Its attempt at mass action a few weeks ago was a damp squib. The truth is that even if the MDC is popular with the masses, it is structurally brittle and lacks strong leadership. It has no capacity to deal with Mugabe's hardened regime. It has been consistently outflanked in the streets by Mugabe's brutal security forces and outmanoeuvred at the negotiating table.
The power relations still favour Mugabe, due to his control of the instruments of repression. There is a need for the MDC to be more dynamic to avoid becoming paralysed. The party also needs to rely more on formal structures to make critical decisions on the way forward, rather than ghostly characters or money grubbers with narrow vested interests. The party risks being hijacked by money mongers, especially now that it is on the verge of gaining power.
The economy is becoming even more paralysed. Over the past three weeks, the economic free fall accelerated. Shortages of just about every basic necessity -- food, fuel, medicine, water and electricity -- are worsening. Factories and companies, which have been operating at below 20% capacity, are slowly grinding to a halt. Unemployment, poverty and deprivation are getting worse. A number of workers are now voluntarily stopping working because they spend more money going to work than they earn.
On the diplomatic front, political principals and their envoys, mainly in the region, are trying hard to resolve the problem, but they have so far failed dismally.
President Thabo Mbeki was in Harare on Friday to talk to Mugabe about political violence, the presidential election runoff and the possibility of a negotiated settlement. The last time Mbeki paid a flying visit to Harare, on April 12, on his way to Lusaka, Zambia, for an urgent Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit, he said there was "no crisis" in Zimbabwe . His exercise in damage-limitation -- saying he meant there was no "electoral crisis" since a runoff would resolve the deadlock -- was soon undermined by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's (ZEC)'s inability to release results for more than a month.
After finally releasing the results, the ZEC is now playing games with the runoff date. The body is refusing to announce when the second round will be held, even though the law says it must come no later than May 23. Instead, ZEC is suggesting the runoff may even be delayed by up to 12 months. No legal basis for this is given.
Fruitless negotiations have been held by the United Nations, the African Union, SADC and SA with Mugabe and the MDC leaders. Zimbabwe has had eight years of wasted diplomacy, which has produced only a national paralysis.
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Muleya is Harare correspondent.
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