Tsvangirai reconciliation bid necessary
Published on: 24th June, 2009
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Morgan’s mission
Prime minister Tsvangirai’s message of reconciliation with Mugabe may not be popular, but it is what Zimbabwe needs
By Jonathan Steele
These have been difficult days in London for Zimbabwe’s prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, as he makes the case that his country is changing. Fellow Zimbabweans shouted him down in Southwark Cathedral when he said things were good enough for them to come home. Then he had to handle sceptical British ministers and media interviewers and urge them to drop their fixation with seeing Robert Mugabe punished.
So it was not surprising that, at one of his final engagements, a speech to Chatham House members on Tuesday, he still found himself “appealing for support”, as he put it frankly.
“I am not a Mandela,” he pointed out with a smile, but there were important parallels with South Africa. It’s easily forgotten now but the transition to democracy in South Africa was not smooth. “It took four years and two months to get a legitimate government after Mandela’s release and another two-years to craft a world-class constitution,” he argued.
Close to 20,000 people were killed in those four years. By implication, Zimbabwe’s recent violence is not unprecedented.
What was unprecedented, he claimed, was the way Zimbabweans mounted a sustained non-violent protest last year “against a post-colonial regime and a flamboyant tyranny and that struggle has largely been won.” The word “largely” is the nub. Tsvangirai repeatedly tried to square the circle. On the one hand, he claimed the transition to a new constitution and free elections was already irreversible.
On the other hand, he argued that only through today’s national unity government and a soft landing for Zanu-PF’s leadership can the transition become irreversible. Wishful thinking or tentative reality? How can anyone be sure?
The crucial ingredient is an amnesty for Mugabe and his henchmen. Unpopular though the line is in Britain and for many Zimbabweans who have had to flee their country, Tsvangirai is right.
“We have no intention of ostracising or vilifying any Zimbabwean. We seek no retribution,” he told Chatham House. “We have to accommodate them; we have to address their concerns. And we have to help them to understand that there is greater good for both the victim and the perpetrator in the end.” Think Mandela and De Klerk. Think Tsvangirai and Mugabe. Think reconciliation.
It is a complex case, made more complex by the fact that Mugabe is not a colonial racist or a settler with European origins. Indeed, as Tsvangirai put it (using words that many others of his generation could echo): “In 1980 Robert Mugabe was my hero”. But the man who had led Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle had gone on to become a champion of exclusion.
Without naming Mugabe in this part of his speech, Tsvangirai compared post-colonial Zimbabwe with a system of political rather than racial apartheid: “One group believes in separate development, oiled by a system of patronage and keeping others out as a survival mechanism, while the entire country cries out for a better deal”.
Tsvangirai is no Mandela, but nor is he a Thabo Mbeki – prone to bitterness. When I last saw him in 2000 during Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections, which were only marginally less bloody than last year’s futile second round, he seemed too sunny and trusting to be a successful political leader.
Nine years of struggle since then, complete with imprisonment, beatings and false accusations of treason, as well as the recent tragedy of his wife’s death and his lucky survival in a mysterious car crash (which he doesn’t blame on Mugabe’s people), have clearly steeled him. His genial temperament has become a strength, not a weakness. He appears to bear no grudges.
“Do I trust Mugabe?” he said Tuesday afternoon. “It’s too early to say I trust him completely, but when we disagree, we do so respectfully. During the negotiations, there were acrimonious exchanges but we all realise we have to make this work.” Much of the press and many people in Britain would love nothing better than to see Mugabe arrested and sent to the Hague. Tsvangirai would be entitled to share that view, but he is bigger and more astute.
He would rather engineer Mugabe’s retreat through democratic and redemptive means. “There’s no possibility of a dignified exit without this unity government,” Tsvangirai argues. “This gives him a chance to restore his legacy as Zimbabwe’s founding father and to allow the transition to take place without the country falling back into chaos.”
Well said, Morgan. It’s a tough and unpopular line to take, but there is no better way. Guardian.co.uk
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