CIAO DATE: 12/2011
November 2011
Transition and reform appear stalemated in Zimbabwe. Profound deficits remain in implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by Zimbabwe’s three main political parties in September 2008. Prospects are remote for engaging core security and law-and-order concerns before elections that are anticipated within twenty months. Nothing significant has changed in the half year since April 2011, when the GPA’s Periodic Review Mechanism reported that most outstanding issues were unresolved; that negotiated solutions are followed by interminable delays in execution appears to have become an entrenched pattern. Opportunities to build a foundation for sustainable political and economic recovery are consistently undermined. Violence and repression are pressing concerns; the police appear unwilling or unable to provide effective deterrence or remedy and the expectation of a more proactive engagement by the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC) around issues of political violence has yet to bear fruit. The promise that the regional organisation, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), would take a more robust stand following the 31 March communiqué of its Organ Troika on Politics, Defence and Security has not yet been adequately borne out. The two competing formations of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have largely welcomed the more proactive engagement of SADC’s facilitation team, headed by South African President Jacob Zuma. But President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, which retains the dominant role in the current power sharing arrangement, has frustrated it, not least because it wishes to preserve the monopoly control of the security sector it relies on as the ultimate line of defence for its hegemony.
Resource link: Resistance and Denial: Zimbabwe's Stalled Reform Agenda [PDF] - 888K