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(TALKZIMBABWE) Zim situation differs from ours, Tsvangirai should

Zim situation differs from ours, Tsvangirai should
Gitau Warigi–Opinion
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:20:00 +0000

ZIMBABWE opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was in Nairobi this week to compare notes with the Prime Minister. It was a logical stopover, considering the parallel between our grand coalition with what he is trying to negotiate with President Robert Mugabe.

The Zimbabwe power-sharing talks, mediated by South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, have reached an impasse. It all boils down to one thing: will Tsvangirai get executive powers or won't he?

Until now, Tsvangirai has held out for full executive authority. Mugabe has rejected this outright. Quite plainly, he is not the kind of person who will ever agree to become ceremonial.

Mbeki somehow understands this, as do most regional heads of state. I suspect they have concluded that Tsvangirai can be convinced to accept a Kenyan-type compromise; the real issue is likely how to sell it to Mugabe.

As things stand, it would probably work out best if Tsvangirai went for the most he can wrest from the Mbeki-mediated talks and avoid playing zero-sum games. Therein is the lesson to learn from Kenya.

The question of whether Mr Odinga's office can be described as 'executive' can be debated the whole day long. But what the Prime Minister has done is to take a fairly amorphous docket and work hard into making something out of it.

He is doing this incrementally, first testing his room for manoeuvre by pushing a few ministers here, the judiciary there, while carefully avoiding a frontal collision with where the real seat of executive power lies.

He will be quite happy announcing changes at the Kilindini port but will avoid stepping into the territory of the likes of Security Minister George Saitoti. Or why else did he resort to a public appeal for the release of post-election violence perpetrators if he has the authority to have them
freed?

As of last week, Parliament was proposing to allow him a weekly slot he has long cherished called Prime Minister's Question Time. It is not quite an executive function, but it expands the visibility the Prime Minister has been seeking.

No one, however, should mistake Robert Mugabe for Mwai Kibaki. That is where the first parallelswith the Kenyan experiment starts getting fuzzy.

The kind of leeway Mr Odinga has been able to extract is almost certainly inconceivable in the context of a power-sharing deal between Tsvangirai and Mugabe.

Added to this is the pure bad blood between the two Zimbabwean protagonists.

Relations between the Kenyan principals are far less nasty, though it is foolhardy to pretend there is much trust there.

Mugabe is a no-nonsense operator who would never brook the lawless disorder we saw in January, irrespective of whether he caused it himself.

Tsvangirai knew instinctively that there would have been very serious consequences if their party were linked to the kind of violence we saw here in Kenya. God forbid if such violence had been directed at Mugabe's supporters.

For someone who supposedly held the reigns of state power, the post-election displacements and bloddletting in Kenya were something that severely tarnished President Kibaki's prestige.

In any case the only thing that forced Mugabe to talk is Zimbabwe's economic meltdown (amid crazy hyperinflation of two million per cent) and the hope that an agreement will result in an easing of Western sanctions and re-open doors to normal investment.

Despite all, Zimbabwe's military, paramilitary, intelligence and police commanders are solidly behind Mugabe. So is the ruling Zanu-PF party. The divisions Tsvangirai sees there are mainly procedural, not doctrinal.

The party's top powerbrokers uniformly detest him. Most ominous is the early declaration by the military that it would never take orders from a "Western puppet." (Here is one regime where perceived puppets, traitors, snitches and homosexuals have traditionally been given very short shrift).

Given their differences, Mugabe's concession - in principle - to share power with Tsvangirai constitutes a considerably greater loss of face than it was for President Kibaki.

That is why Mbeki opts to defer to Mugabe despite Tsvangirai's protests. The manner in which Kofi Annan choose to deal with President Kibaki was altogether different.

Talking of Zimbabwe, swimmer Kirsty Coventry has set an Olympic record no other athlete representing Africa has ever achieved.

She becomes the first Olympian from the continent to win the most medals (one gold, three silver) at a single Olympiad. Her four medals were the entire haul Zimbabwe won in Beijing. Now, there is a lady who deserves kudos.

Gitau Warigi
gwarigi@nation.co.ke

Article first published in the Saturday Nation, Kenya
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/462586/-/3l7ev3/-/index.html

Labels: MORGAN TSVANGIRAI

posted by MrK @ 6:55 PM