Zimbabwe: Crisis group warns of relapse into chaos

HARARE, 23 April 2009 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe could slide back into chaos, the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based non-profit organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict, warns in a new report.

After months of negotiations between Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF and opposition parties, brokered by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), it was hoped that the Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed in September 2008, and the formation of the unity government on 11 February 2009, would mark Zimbabwe's renaissance.

However, Western donors have cast a jaundiced eye on the unity government, while Mugabe, who is still president, is blamed for the anti-democratic practices that turned one of the region's most successful economies into a begging bowl.

"If the international community, regretting the inadequacies of the power-sharing arrangement, stands back with a 'wait-and-see' attitude, the likely result will be that Mugabe and/or the military establishment will entrench themselves again, with a corresponding return to violence, repression and catastrophic economic policies. It is time to promote change," the ICG said in a report, Engaging the Inclusive Government.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and appointed prime minister of the unity government, has conceded that the GPA has shortcomings, but said it was vital that the unity government received support to reverse a decade of catastrophic economic decline.

John Makumbe, a political scientist based in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, said ZANU-PF's commitment to the unity government was far from satisfactory, and cited Mugabe's grab of an MDC ministry, ongoing farm invasions, and the delay in the appointment of provincial governors.

A return to chaos is the plan

"Those from ZANU-PF are demonstrating amply that they are ready to return to the decay they presided over for so many years, and a relapse into chaos could happen overnight if those in the inclusive government and the international community do not play their cards well," Makumbe told IRIN.

"Once sanctions are lifted and the economy is performing well again, Mugabe and his hardliners are likely to create an environment that leads to the collapse of the inclusive government. They would arrest or fire the MDC leaders from the government and suspend the planned constitutional referendum, and go back to their old ways of looting and repression," he said.

The US and the European Union (EU) have said they will lift sanctions targeting Mugabe and the ruling ZANU-PF elite, including travel bans and frozen foreign assets, when they see a commitment to democracy by the old guard, which has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.

The ICG sees the fragility of the unity government as a consequence of resistance by ZANU-PF hardliners, who fear that greater transparency could reveal years of graft and self-enrichment.

"Some old-regime elements seek to cause the new government to fail out of fear of prosecution, loss of power and its financial sinecures, hatred for Tsvangirai or the MDC, or a genuine belief that they are the guardians of the country's liberation," the report said.

"They are thus continuing to provoke and frustrate the MDC, as shown by such actions as continuing arrests and detention of MDC activists, refusal of police to carry out some government orders, efforts to drive out the last few hundred white farmers by continued farm invasions, and stalling on the appointment of provincial governors, as well as reconfiguration of ministerial powers."

The ICG said there was "a real risk of a coup" and a possibility of Tsvangirai being assassinated, despite the support of the army's middle and lower ranks for the unity government.

Although a delegation of ministers from all parties attempted persuade the EU and the US to remove sanctions, the ICG said this might be "premature", and that the SADC should work with Zimbabwe "to help make the reform process irreversible".

Deconstructing the security apparatus

To speed up the possible lifting of sanctions, the ICG said, a strategy should be put in place to "retire virtually all members of the security sector senior leadership" ? in the army, police and state intelligence - which are seen as the architects of human rights abuses.

Persuading them to retire, amid fears of recrimination in the post-Mugabe era, may require "leverage with a law that offers immunity to senior generals from domestic prosecution for past political crimes", the ICG said.

Such a course should combine transitional justice mechanisms, including a truth commission similar to that established after the demise of apartheid in neighbouring South Africa, the report recommended.

"The US, EU and others could, in accordance with their laws, sweeten the deal by removing targeted sanctions on those who would accept and comply," the ICG said, while South Africa should warn them that if they remained defiant, they risked prosecution.

The ICG urged donors to pursue a "humanitarian plus assistance strategy" that supported an emergency economic recovery programme promoting the "revival of the education, health and water sanitation sectors, as well as a functioning civil service and reconstruction of basic infrastructure."

Countries in the SADC, particularly South Africa, should also provide direct assistance. The regional bloc has pledged more than US$8 billion in aid to Zimbabwe but most of its members are too poor to give their neighbour any meaningful support.

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