Mugabe poses test for African powers

By Peter Greste
BBC News, Johannesburg

For the Movement for Democratic Change, the UN Security Council's resolution on Zimbabwe represents something of a breakthrough.

The party's leader, Morgan Tsvangirai - now sheltering in the Dutch Embassy in Harare - has told Dutch radio that he believes it is "a very important resolution".

"It recognises the people who are accountable for the violence, and it squarely placed that responsibility at Mugabe's leadership... I am sure that he can no longer remain defiant to that international position," he said.

Except that President Mugabe probably can indeed remain defiant.

Impact

The Security Council's non-binding resolution offered no specific measures or threats beyond vaguely "condemning the campaign of violence against the political opposition ahead of the second round of the presidential elections scheduled for 27 June".

To be fair, the council's resolution marks the first time it has openly and unequivocally pinned blame for the crisis on Zimbabwe's government.

And it is also the first time that the three traditional obstacles to Security Council action - Russia, China and South Africa - have signed on to such strident criticism.

But Zanu-PF has consistently dismissed verbal attacks from outside Africa, saying they are the rantings of former colonial powers or their proxies who cannot stomach the idea of a successful, independent African state.

Indirectly, the resolution could have an impact by stiffening the diplomatic spines of other African governments.

Senegal's president Abdoulaye Wade issued a statement calling for the election, still due this Friday, to be postponed indefinitely.

And in a long - but carefully-worded - statement, South Africa's ANC said that it was "deeply dismayed" by the actions of the government of Zimbabwe, "which is riding roughshod over the hard-won democratic rights of the people of that country".

"The ugly incidents and scenes that have been visited on the people of Zimbabwe persuade us that a run-off presidential election offers no solution to Zimbabwe's crisis," the ANC went on to say.

Coming as it does from a fellow liberation movement, the statement is likely to sting President Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.

Further, it follows similar statements from Rwanda, Tanzania, Botswana and Zambia.

Mbeki's position

The foreign ministers from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) have been meeting to work out their strategy - but increasingly they appear more willing than ever to isolate the Zimbabwean government.

All that leaves Thabo Mbeki in an increasingly difficult position.

The South African president is leading negotiations to end the crisis, and the Security Council resolution explicitly commended him for his efforts.

But despite the growing criticism, he has consistently said that his role as mediator forbids him from openly commenting on the situation - save calling for a negotiated settlement.

He is also the one person who has direct access to Zanu-PF. The party has long since closed ranks around a small but powerful cabal of security service officials - who have no interest whatsoever in talking about anything that might expose them to retribution.

That has made it almost impossible for foreign diplomats to penetrate the ruling clique and talk directly to the hidden power-brokers.

Significantly, most of the recent statements from regional powers call for "respect for the democratic will of Zimbabweans".

The references to democracy are important because they imply that any settlement must start and finish with recognition of the way Zimbabweans have voted.

In the first round of the election they backed the MDC. Morgan Tsvangirai might not have won the presidential election with an outright majority, but he got more votes than Robert Mugabe.

The MDC also now holds a majority of parliamentary seats, so they are, in the eyes of many, the ruling party.

Zanu's aces

But in his public statements at least, Thabo Mbeki has refused to apportion blame for the violence and spoken of the MDC and Zanu-PF in equal terms.

By dealing with the two parties as equal players, Thabo Mbeki not only fails to recognise that electoral reality, but he tilts the balance of power firmly in the direction of the ruling party.

Zanu-PF controls all the security services - as Morgan Tsvangirai has learned to his cost - and it dictates what goes on state media. It runs the ministries and controls the economy.

In effect, it holds all the aces. Meanwhile the MDC's leader is sheltering in a foreign embassy; its secretary general is in prison on treason charges; and its party workers are either in hiding, in hospital, or in a grave.

So frustrated has the MDC become with Thabo Mbeki that the party formally wrote to him asking him to bow out of the mediation process.

But the longer President Mbeki takes to reach a conclusion, the more time Zanu-PF has to close ranks, to organise, and to prepare for the diplomatic isolation that now seems inevitable.

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