Once hailed as one of Africa’s most promising economies, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is now on the verge of collapse. With clean-running water long gone, a massive wheat shortage endangering food supplies, unemployment at 80 percent, and inflation as high as 10,000 percent, the government’s ruinous economic mismanagement is now impossible to ignore. Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that almost a quarter of Zimbabweans have already fled the country.

Despite the crisis, however, Mugabe’s authoritarian government seems to be maintaining its grip on power. Even in the face of economic disaster, Mugabe’s anti-colonial credentials have so far allowed him to nullify Western pressure as well as domestic opposition, leaving few if any in a position to unseat him. Robert Mugabe’s peculiar position in the African community has been a key factor in perpetuating his rule. Mugabe led the opposition to the colonial, white-dominated Rhodesian government and has ruled Zimbabwe continuously since the nation achieved independence in 1980. He is still considered “one of the great African independence leaders who paved the way for South Africa to win over apartheid,” said Andrew Meldrum, a journalist and author who worked in Zimbabwe for over 20 years, in an interview with the HPR. According to Meldrum “that legacy is why people are afraid to criticize him.”

Mugabe has burnished this image carefully, blunting Western criticism of his rule by casting it as a form of neo-colonialism. The “land reform” that touched off the current crisis—in which the government expropriated white-owned farmland for redistribution to black owners—was billed by Mugabe as “the liberation of our land” from “British settlers.” Mugabe also dismissed foreign opposition as the efforts of “frustrated colonialists.”

Former South African opposition leader Tony Leon tells the HPR that “the way [Mugabe] keeps his solidarity politics going with other Third World governments is to flip the finger to Britain” and other Western governments, thereby winning the sympathy of other African nations. The consequences can be seen in preparations for the upcoming African Union-EU summit in Portugal, which African leaders have insisted that Mugabe be allowed to attend, despite an EU travel ban on his regime. In recent months, Mugabe has also been reaching out to other nations that have fallen afoul of the international community, including Iran. Such strategies, according to Mr. Leon, continue to result in “enough support for him from countries like Libya, and to some extent South Africa and Uganda” to keep Mugabe in power despite his pariah status in the rest of the world.

Africa’s general acquiescence has also complicated the ongoing negotiations between Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which are sponsored by the intergovernmental South African Development Community. While South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, is supposed to be an impartial mediator in the negotiations, questions have been raised over his neutrality. In Meldrum’s words, Mbeki has “already endorsed three blatantly flawed elections” in which ZANU-PF claimed victory. While Mbeki calls his approach “quiet diplomacy,” Leon believes “silent approval” is a more accurate description.

Years of electoral tampering and government abuse—including a brutal beating of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in March—have also left the opposition in tatters, with two competing factions, as well as tactics that Leon calls “incoherent and strategically maladroit.” International intervention has so far been unable to halt the abuse or strengthen the bargaining position of the weakened MDC, which has been essentially powerless to effect any significant change.

Even if international pressure and opposition coalitions are not enough to unseat Mugabe, there remain other possibilities for reform. As the economic crisis grows worse, unease with the octogenarian leader is growing within Mugabe’s own ZANU-PF party, leading to speculation that he might step down or be forced out in favor of other party leaders. There is even talk of a possible military coup. But would-be coup leaders still face important obstacles, as Mr. Mugabe has proven “very good at sidelining potential rivals and replacements,” says Leon.

Still, whenever and however Mugabe is eventually replaced, Meldrum emphasizes that the rest of the world must continue to “push for real change, to not allow Zimbabwe to be handed from on dictator to another.” Without meaningful reform, Zimbabwe’s crippling economic woes are unlikely to leave with Mugabe.¨ ]]>http://hprsite.squarespace.com/zimbabwe-in-crisis-112007/rss-comments-entry-1373674.xml