Barely has Thabo Mbeki had time to take a break after leaving his office as President of South Africa, he is being called upon already to do somemore work. No, it is not work for the ANC but he needs to head back to Zimbabwe and try sort out this power sharing deal that he thought he had concluded. I bet you Mbeki had thought that once the deal was signed between the parties in Zimbabwe so that they share power, his job would be done. But guess again Mr. Mbeki, Zimbabwe still needs you!
The problem in Zimbabwe is that Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claims that Mugabe’s ruling party wants to retain key posts – believed to be the defence, home affairs, state security and finance ministries. Apparently this is in violation of the deal that was agreed. It is thought that these key ministries were meant to be shared i.e. defence and state security to Mugabe and home affairs and finance to Tsvangirai but it looks like Mugabe wants all of them! These issues should have been included in the signed deal but I guess that is why it took forever for the deal to be signed as I am sure the decision about who would govern which ministries was a sticking point. Probably Mbeki just decided to leave the ‘who gets which ministries’ part out of the deal and just get the parties to sign the deal so that he (Mbeki) comes out and looks like the hero for brokering the deal.
Well now that the parties in Zimbabwe are still no seeing eye-to-eye, they are going to have to call upon Mbeki to sort this out. Mbeki’s spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga said SADC would have to “formally pronounce” whether Mbeki would continue as mediator. However he added: “President Mbeki will participate in any process that is aimed at taking the African continent a step forward.” So clearly, Mbeki is still willing to help sort out the Zimbabwe crisis.
The way this all looks is pretty simple: Mugabe had probably agreed in principle that MDC would get certain key ministries but then those underneath Mugabe do not agree with that and they are the ones causing these delays in a government being formed in Zimbabwe. Time is ticking for Zimbabwe and a solution has to be agreed soon. Further delays are only making things worse for the millions of Zimbabweans suffering in the country. It has been over 8 years now since the Zimbabwe situation started heading on a downward spiral. It is time for all this to stop!
