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Talks on Zimbabwe may lead to unlikely coalition

Zimbabwe’s beaten down opposition may end up being forced to accept what it swears is unacceptable — a power-sharing deal with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

Some say it would only prolong Zimbabwe’s agony, while others see a coalition — perhaps with Mugabe as president and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister or vice president — as the only way to lead the nation out of the current impasse and begin reversing its economic collapse.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, appointed by the main regional bloc to mediate between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, has said some form of coalition is the goal of talks that got off to a tentative start in South Africa on July 10.

On Friday, the opposition applauded plans announced for Mbeki to work closely with the UN and the African Union as he attempts to mediate, saying that this satisfies its demand that Mbeki be joined by another mediator. The opposition had accused Mbeki of favoring Mugabe.

George Sibotshiwe, a spokesman for Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, said Friday’s announcement could open the way to an agreement in coming days on a framework for power-sharing talks.

Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party remain adamant that he is Zimbabwe’s duly elected leader, even if most of the rest of the world says a June 27 presidential runoff in which he claimed victory over Tsvangirai was a sham.

More ominously, Mugabe’s military chiefs say their allegiance is only to Mugabe.

A dramatic intervention by the outside world looks unlikely. On July 11, Russia and China delivered a rare twin veto of a US-sponsored UN Security Council resolution that would have imposed sanctions on Mugabe and his top aides. The aim was to punish them for allegedly overseeing political violence and fraud, and to force them to negotiate.

ZANU-PF has said it’s open to power-sharing — as long as Mugabe heads any coalition. The opposition has said it’s open to a “government of national healing,” but only with moderate ZANU-PF members, not Mugabe.

Davie Malungisa, director of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe, an independent Harare-based group, described Tsvangirai’s objection to Mugabe as a negotiating position.

“When you are getting into bargaining ... you start from very high,” Malungisa said in a telephone interview from Zimbabwe. “It’s a matter of who blinks first.”

Malungisa said agreeing to govern alongside a man accused of torturing and killing dissidents “would be suicidal,” because Mugabe could betray Tsvangirai.
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