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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 03/04
Decision Time in Zimbabwe
July 2003
Abstract
Change is in the air in Zimbabwe. Its citizens no longer talk about whether it will come, but rather when. All acknowledge, however, that the road will be dangerous, possibly violent. South Africa is the single country with ability to help its neighbour through the roughest patches if it is willing to engage with sufficient determination to persuade the government of President Robert Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party to sit down with their challenger, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and then facilitate and mediate negotiations for a transitional government and new elections. A range of other international players need to play supporting roles, including the EU, the Southern Africa Development Commission (SADC), the African Union (AU), and the Commonwealth, but most directly and prominently the U.S. The visit of President Bush to South Africa on 8 July is a unique opportunity to chart action that could lead to a negotiated solution and an end to the crisis.
Zimbabwe's internal situation has continued to worsen, producing increasingly destabilising effects in southern Africa through refugees and economic chaos and damaging the entire continent's efforts to establish new political and trade relations with the rest of the world through the NEPAD initiative. Inside the country everyone is suffering - the opposition and its supporters from political repression and the collapse of the economy, but even ZANU-PF leaders whose opportunities to plunder a steadily deteriorating state are disappearing - and everyone wants change.
