Looking beyond Zuma and Mugabe

Pigou told ISS Today last week that Zuma is likely to tread carefully during his visit to Harare. ‘Mugabe is not someone who can easily be leveraged,’ he said. The visit is also likely to be manipulated by some of the role players in Zimbabwe’s succession battle for their own factional agendas.

However, the timing of the visit could be useful for South Africa to ‘support a constructive and inclusive way forward’. South Africa’s engagement needs to be more pro-active, in line with its stated commitment to solving conflicts on the continent. ‘A hands-off approach has done little to avert the continued slide downwards,’ he said.

The ideal would be to start looking towards the 2018 elections and to make sure they comply with the SADC election guidelines. An umbrella structure of opposition parties has come together to demand electoral reforms. Civil society organisations are also using the SADC guidelines as a lobbying tool. 

Other outside actors, like the European Union, should be more robust in their engagement with Zimbabwe. If not, they will be seen to be merely propping up ZANU-PF and perpetuating a deteriorating situation through its financial support, he said.

Martin Rupiya, associate professor with the Institute for Renaissance Studies at the University of South Africa agrees that while there was a clear strategy led by the administration of former president Thabo Mbeki, ‘that of President Jacob Zuma appears to have placed the Zimbabwe issue on the back burner.’

The erstwhile high-profile South African negotiating team to Zimbabwe, led by Small Enterprises Minister Lindiwe Zulu, seemed to have ‘disappeared,’ he says.

According to Rupiya, SADC countries like Botswana, Mozambique and Tanzania would like to see a coherent crisis and engagement policy with Zimbabwe. ‘Otherwise we have a repeat of the Lesotho SADC stalemate all over again, but on a bigger scale.’

At this stage though, everyone seems to be adopting a wait-and-see attitude while Mugabe continues to hold the reins, after 36 years in power.

There is no indication whether Zuma’s upcoming visit will change any of that.

By Liesl Louw-Vaudran for  ISS.

Ed: It is important to point out that the ZANU-PF annual conference is not an elective conference. Leadership changes are only made at congresses. The next ZANU-PF congress is in 2019.

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