Globalaffairs

Issue 11/October-November 2008
By Daniil Gorbatenko

When ZANU-PF and MDC signed the Zimbabwe power sharing deal (ZPSD) brokered by the South-African president Thabo Mbeki on September, 15 [1], it occurred to me for a moment that I might have been too rash to conclude in my recent article that a workable power-sharing deal is impossible and that outside intervention is the likeliest route to Mugabe’s regime demise. The initial conciliatory statements of the parties involved and cautious (expressed by David Miliband) [2] and not-so-cautious (expressed by Ban Ki Moon) [3] optimism from the outside observers seemed to tune into this narrative.

However, the developments that followed the handshakes suggest that ZPSD appears to be a non-starter. And here is why.

The first impediment to successful implementation of the deal lies in the widely differing motivations of the parties which have little to share in terms of intentions and much in terms of power. Although both MDC and ZANU-PF had to make significant rhetorical concessions to show good will, ZANU-PF and Mugabe obviously have a hidden agenda. In fact, their chief motivation for sharing power with MDC on paper seems to be prevention of total economic collapse by fooling foreign investors and aid agencies into changing their attitude to the political regime in Zimbabwe. One may ask why Mugabe and his cronies fear such collapse. The reason is plain simple, the need to pay salaries to the army and secret police to keep the regime afloat.

This is not to say that ZANU-PF is a monolithic actor with a uniform position on the stance towards MDC. There are obviously people in the party who understand the imperative to change the regime’s disastrous policies. But there is a dark side to this, and it is the position of the hard-line elements within the party and security apparatus reportedly organized around the shadowy Joint-Operations Command (JOC) [4] which possess an enormous spoiler potential and impetus to render the power-sharing deal obsolete.

And the position of the diehard regime supporters is by far not the only blunder. The deal itself seems to be inherently flawed which is the direct result of the way it came into being.

The deal was brokered not by a neutral intermediary but by a politician overtly sympathetic to the least committed party in the negotiations. Thabo Mbeki with his quiet diplomacy has long and for good reasons been criticized for his tendency to support Mugabe [5]. But the sad irony of the story is that Mbeki seems to be the only mediator possible. And it was no surprise that he failed to exert sufficient pressure on Mugabe to work out a viable deal with MDC. The fact that we are still unaware of the details of the deal which the parties actually promised to make public as soon as it were put on paper [6] strongly suggests that the actual deal simply lacked critical details such as the distribution of ministries in the government of national unity (GNU) envisaged by the deal.

Which brings the parties to the point where having in principle agreed to sharing power they have to share it in practice without legal guidelines or credible commitment of the party with the guns and money. ZANU-PF is of course unwilling to share these, i.e. to relinquish total control over the police and remaining income sources. MDC on its part rightly insists that not having these makes it a junior “partner” in the all-too-familiar crony government. Not surprisingly, the negotiations over the breakdown of ministries between MDC and ZANU-PF have got helplessly deadlocked, with ZANU-PF reportedly claiming all the politically significant posts in the GNU making a mockery of the very concept of power-sharing [7].

The question is, if ZPSD is deadlocked, should the international community continue attempting to unlock it?

Is ZPSD Necessary? And What May the Consequences of Pushing for Its Implementation? Power-Sharing in Historical Perspective

But will the mediators relinquish their support for ZPSD in light of the current stalemate? The worldwide endorsement of the deal makes it difficult for the international community to back from it because otherwise it should put meaningful (as opposed to rhetorical) pressure on Mugabe to either step down straight away or agree to conducting free and fair presidential election, which is effectively the same, or even intervene militarily, if the international community does not want to watch the looming humanitarian catastrophe unfold. It is highly likely, however, that the easiest option (i.e. support of the deal, however deficient) will be chosen.

What may happen next? Before looking into history, it is important to determine the key features of power-sharing which distinguish it from other peace-building arrangements.

The most important characteristic of power-sharing is that power is shared contrary to the majoritarian principle embodied in the democratic procedures. In other words, the parties are allocated posts in the resulting GNU in accordance with certain principle(s) modifying the results of popular vote or even independent from it. Power-sharing arrangements are usually attempted where it is perceived that purely democratic arrangements will not work or may exacerbate the conflict for some reason.

Historically, power-sharing agreements brokered by outside mediators (as opposed to traditional arrangements, such as the Lebanese model) are a recent phenomenon. In fact, such power sharing was first applied in the end of the 1980s in the wake of transition of the former Warsaw Pact republics [8], such as Czech Republic, Romania, Poland and others to democracy. Those arrangements were promoted both by the Western mediators (such as Margaret Thatcher in Poland) and paradoxically by the Soviet Union unable to further secure the reign of the puppet regimes. All these power-sharing deals involved the ruling parties of the single-party states sharing power with their popular democratic contenders. Where power-sharing was not used, as was the case in Romania, the transition from communism was violent. The East European countries, where the PSD’s were tried, shared important common features, most important, highly unpopular and defunct regimes clinging to Soviet assistance to survive and the clearly transitional character of the GNU’s created as a result of power-sharing. The active involvement of Europe and USSR, determined to prevent widespread violence, was conducive to peaceful outcome.

Following these events, before Zimbabwe outside-brokered power-sharing was attempted only in ethnically or religiously divided countries, such as South Africa, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Sudan and Kenya. The main rationale for power-sharing in those cases was to avoid further ethnic or religious strife in highly divided societies but the results were mixed. For example, the Arusha power-sharing deal for Rwanda ended abruptly with a disastrous genocide [9]. In Sudan the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum and SLA in the South has so far not been implemented in full and is now on the brink of collapse [10]. In Kenya it is probably premature to make a judgment about success of its PSD, although it appears to have stopped overt violence. And only in South Africa and Northern Ireland one can cautiously judge the power-sharing deals relative success-stories [11].

The situation in Zimbabwe mostly resembles that in Kenya, but also has some alarming similarities with the pre-genocide political landscape in Rwanda.

ZPSD was clearly modeled on the Kenyan PSD based on a bitterly contested outcome of the presidential election in 2007. The incumbent retained the post of the president while the challenger, Raila Odinga, received the post of prime-minister [12]. The opposition also has a majority in the lower house of the parliament.

However, there are important and alarming features which distinguish Zimbabwe from Kenya and make it similar to Rwanda in 1993. First of all, the ruling regime in Zimbabwe has a legacy of prolonged violent suppression of the opposition (similar to the oppression of the Tutsis by the Hutu-dominated state in Rwanda) while in Kenya the president Mwai Kibaki himself came to power democratically after the end of the authoritarian regime of Daniel arap Moi [13]. But even more important and dangerous is the presence in Zimbabwe of powerful potential spoilers who are basically outside of the process of negotiations and who have or at least perceive to have too much to lose as a result of sharing power and view the political process as a zero-sum game. And these are the hard-line members of the security apparatus and the army led by the aforementioned JOC. In Rwanda, for instance, such spoilers were instrumental in disrupting the Arusha accords and perpetrating the subsequent genocide [14].

While genocide may not probably now happen in Zimbabwe since the opposition to Mugabe is not confined to the Ndebele Rwandans who were reportedly subjected to ethnic cleansing before in response to the Joshua Nkomo’s stance against Mugabe, the security apparatus may well launch an overt bloody elimination campaign against the opposition or even a coup-d-etat against Mugabe to retain power (It is still unknown who shot down the plane with the Rwandan president [15] which immediately preceded the genocide). One may at this point ask why they did not do this during the electoral campaign. Perhaps, they were confident (and for good reason) that the unannounced campaign of violence they have already launched will be sufficient to rig the election into Mugabe’s favor.

Why may power-sharing change the hardliners’ calculus and make them more prone to overt violence? The answer lies both in their fear of real power-sharing which would mean that part of the security apparatus may be placed under opposition control and expectations that power-sharing may mark the beginning of the end of the Mugabe regime. The hardliners’ “winner takes it all” mindset only feeds into their hostility to power-sharing.

The Bottom Line

What conclusions can be drawn from the above analysis?

To start with, the current political situation in the Zimbabwe does not warrant application of power-sharing. The Zimbabwean society is not anywhere near as divided as the societies where power-sharing has usually been applied and advocated as a policy tool. Nor are there any signs of the current regime’s fundamental weakness in terms of coercive potential as was the case with the countries in the Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.

Besides, the continued push for power-sharing implementation may well result in a violent last-ditch attempt by the powerful spoilers in the Zimbabwean security apparatus to wrestle the power not only from the opposition but even from Robert Mugabe which would be a worst-case scenario.

To sideline these spoilers, the international community should either choke off the financing which is still flowing into their pockets and allows them to pay to the rank and file members of the security apparatus to maintain their loyalty or launch a humanitarian intervention to restore and protect real political process in Zimbabwe. None of these is easy, but there is no other way to put an end to enormous human suffering in Zimbabwe.

Daniil Gorbatenko
Moscow Higher School of Economic, Law Department

References

1. BBC News. Zimbabwe Rivals in Historic Pact. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7615906.stm
2. Miliband Gives Cautious Welcome to Zimbabwe Power-Sharing Deal. Available at: http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/mhqlqlqlaukf/
3. allAfrica.com. Zimbabwe: Power-Sharing Deal Sparks Praise from Ban. Available at: http://allafrica.com/stories/200809120003.html
4. allAfrica.com. Zimbabwe: JOC Opposes Zanu PF On Talks. Available at: http://allafrica.com/stories/200808080253.html
5. See for example “Zimbabwe: Tutu Lashes out at Mbeki for Quiet Diplomacy Policy.” Available at: http://allafrica.com/stories/200806161685.html
6. ABC News: Mbeki Says Zimbabwe Power-Sharing Deal Struck. Available at: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=5777530
7. Reuters Alertnet: Deadlock over Ministers Threatens Zimbabwe Deal – MDC. Available at: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LM542384.htm
8. Welsh H.A. (1994). Political Transition Processes in Central and Eastern Europe, Comparative Politics, 26, 4.
9. Traniello M. (2008). Power-Sharing: Lessons from South Africa and Rwanda. International Public Policy Review, 3, 2
10. International Crisis Group Report. Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement: Beyond the Crisis. Available at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5329
11. American University in Beirut News Highlights. Seminar Proposes Power-Sharing in Conflicted Societies, such as Lebanon and Northern Ireland. Available at: http://www.aub.edu.lb/news/archive/preview.php?id=77800
12. BBC News. Key Points: Kenya Power-Sharing Deal. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7269476.stm
13. PBS Online NewsHour: Kenya’s Unrest. Key Players. Mwai Kibaki. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/africa/kenya/2008/keyplayers/
14. Traniello M. (2008). Op. cit.
15. Ibid.

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