Mugabe-Tsvangirai Power Share Yet To Be Realized

LYNN NEARY, Host:

We turn now to another political crisis, this one in Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will continue power-sharing talks despite failure to reach an agreement over the weekend. The two have been at odds since a disputed election in March. Mugabe won a runoff vote in June after Tsvangirai pulled out of the race, charging that his supporters were the targets of state-sponsored violence.

South African President Thabo Mbeki is trying to broker the deal and here to talk more about this is Joel Barkan, the senior associate of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Thanks for being with us.

JOEL BARKAN: Good to be with you, Lynn.

NEARY: So there had been some hope that there would be a power-sharing deal would be reached this past weekend at the summit of the South African Development Committee. That didn't happen. Why not?

BARKAN: Well, first of all, the summit was not a part of the direct negotiations. It was the background to it. And the incoming head of the Southern African Development Community is Thabo Mbeki, who had been tasked by SADC two years ago to be the mediator in this dispute. The negotiations got under way a few weeks ago. You had the failed election of June 27th, then an interlude, then the parties finally got together about three weeks ago, Mbeki flying up to Harari. They've been continuing ever since, and the basic crux of the matter is that this is not a negotiation simply to bring in Tsvangirai and a number of his colleagues into the cabinet but whether there will be a real power-sharing deal. If there's no power-sharing deal, as Tsvangirai said over the weekend, no deal is better than a bad deal, and that's where things stand now.

NEARY: Right. In an interview with the New York Times this weekend, Tsvangirai made it very clear that he is not going to agree to anything that doesn't give him real power, but would make anyone think that Mugabe would concede power to him? He's never shown any indication of that so far.

BARKAN: This is a very tough nut to crack for the reasons you just said. Mugabe is adamant, although there is some background to this. It is not only Mugabe. It's the security forces and the police. There have been some scattered reports that senior colleagues in (unintelligible) have been urging Robert Mugabe for over a year to consider stepping down, that he was in also - there were reports that he was willing to concede the election, the first round of the election that occurred back on the 28th of March, but the security forces said no.

So he may well not to be - have a totally free hand in this and try to hang on. But eventually, he is going to be unable to do so because the economy, everyone knows, is collapsing. And he holds the security forces and others together through patronage. He is simply running out of patronage. So it's really not a matter of whether, it's when.

NEARY: What role can the regional leaders, the southern African regional leaders, play in this? They're beginning to exert some pressure on Mugabe. He was not really well received at this summit. The president of Botswana didn't even show up. Can they really effect this power-sharing mediation that's going on right now?

BARKAN: Well, they can certainly hasten the arrival at a power-sharing deal. Unfortunately, as long as Thabo Mbeki continues in his role as the chief mediator, now that he has come in as chair of SADC, I am afraid you are going to see more of the same.

Mbeki is really not perceived as an honest broker here, at least from the standpoint of the MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai. He's had a clear tilt toward Mugabe from the start. That's complicated things. And also, in terms of the big powers, the United States, for example, the West is perceived on the other hand by Mugabe as having a clear tilt towards Tsvangirai. This complicates finding a middle ground.

As for SADC itself, in direct answer to your question, there is a clear breaking of the ranks. Ian Khama, the president of the Botswana, Levy Mwanawasa, the president of Zambia, who unfortunately recently suffered a stroke and wasn't at this meeting over the weekend - they have been putting increasing pressure on Mbeki to in turn be more even-handed in this but part of the problem here is Thabo Mbeki.

And a final comment here is Mbeki, of course, is lame-duck president of South Africa, and there are rising voices in South Africa or in the trade union movement with Jacob Zuma, the incoming president of South Africa, to bring this to a speedy close, expecting South Africa, as well.

NEARY: I was going to say, political - we don't have much time left - but political stability in Zimbabwe is important to that entire region.

BARKAN: It is, indeed, and it's affecting the South African economy. South Africa has about 40 percent, 25 to 40 percent unemployment rate. There are a large number of refugees, over a million, the count isn't actually sure, of Zimbabweans in South Africa. And there were riots in South Africa earlier this year against Zimbabweans and others, non-South Africans, who are perceived as taking South African jobs. So there is an interconnectedness here in the region, quite right.

NEARY: Joel Barkan is senior associate of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Thanks for being with us.

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NEARY: Just ahead, a look at the state of social services after a Philadelphia teen with cerebral palsy starved to death under her mother's care. That's next on Tell Me More from NPR News. I'm Lynn Neary.

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