19 December 2003
The SACP welcomes President Mbeki's visit yesterday to Harare, and his meetings with President Mugabe and MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Contrary to much public commentary, the SACP believes that the post-Abuja Commonwealth situation might, in fact, create more favourable conditions for a Southern African-facilitated and Zimbabwean-driven negotiations process in that country.
The SACP conducted an intensive fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe last week, meeting with senior government ministers, the chairperson of ZANU-PF, Minister John Nkomo, the president of MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, the trade union movement and a host of other social movement and human rights formations.
In our view, whatever their intention, Commonwealth-driven dead-lines and UK-inspired road-maps for Zimbabwe have not been helpful to unblocking the impasse. These externally generated agendas have too easily exposed the MDC and other opposition forces to the allegation that they were being manipulated when they raised their own legitimate perspectives. These agendas have also focused the hopes of opposition forces too much on external "rescuers" and have also tended to force the ruling party into a laager which is suspicious of external engagement as inherently hostile.
The Zimbabwean government and the opposition democratic forces need desperately and jointly to address the prevailing socio-economic crisis, and they simultaneously need to contribute to more favourable, climate-creating conditions for a political settlement. These things need to be done for the sake of Zimbabwe, and not because there is an externally imposed deadline. The primary purpose of democratisation and normalisation measures should not be pleasing foreign donors.
For all of these reasons, the SACP welcomes President Mugabe's commitment yesterday to serious negotiations with the MDC, and we welcome the focused attention he gave, in his State of Nation address earlier this month, to the prevailing socio-economic crisis. We also look forward to the outcome of next week's MDC national policy conference at which, we believe, the organisation will reaffirm its social democratic values, and commit itself to land reform that does not return the country to the injustices of the pre-2000 reality.
The prevailing socio-economic crisis in Zimbabwe cries out for a collective and patriotic response from the ruling party and from a wide range of opposition forces. The current political stalemate must be broken, so that the underlying issues can be addressed in substance.
As for those of us in South Africa, we need to reject attempts by the DA, for instance, to turn Zimbabwe into an allegory for our own society. That simply does not help the plight of Zimbabweans. We need, also, to move away from vesting either all expectations or all blame in our own President. We all have a responsibility for fostering an effective resolution. The challenge confronting progressive South Africans is a broad engagement with our Zimbabwean colleagues across the political divide to assist Zimbabweans themselves to find solutions to their own society's crisis.
CONTACT
Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara (surname Jara)
Department of Media, Information and Publicity
South African Communist Party