Zimbabwe Update -- Mugabe Strikes Out in China

SW Radio Africa notes that Zimbabwe has become a haven for terrorists and their kin. [here] This includes recently apprehended Haroon Rashid Aswat, who traveled freely in Zimbabwe before crossing into Zambia and being arrested there.

Meanwhile Business Day notes that Mugabe's "turn to the East" has not been as productive as he had hoped.

ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe returned to Harare from China at the weekend almost empty handed.... Mugabe received minimal economic help last week, and China, Russia and Algeria tried unsuccessfully to block United Nations (UN) special envoy Anna Tibaijuka from addressing the UN Security Council about her report on Operation Murambatsvina, which says the urban clean-up campaign made 700000 people homeless.

BD points out that the collapse of Mugabe's eastern initiative leaves South Africa in a commanding position. Mugabe desperately needs money and SA is his last resort. This may have been in the works all along.

Some diplomats have said China’s refusal to extend Mugabe’s government more than $6m for grain imports, which Zimbabwe’s state-owned Herald said he had been given, may be part of a co-ordinated play between SA, China and other countries to ensure the beleaguered leader has to turn to SA for help.

Others took the more plausible line:

Mugabe met Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing last week, but a source said China had decided to give him temporary political protection, but no economic aid of substance.

“The Chinese have done their assessment and it’s ‘Mugabe, you are not worth investing in’,” the source said.

Even with the devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar’s official exchange rate, the ability of exporters to retain foreign exchange and the move toward high interest, the Chinese did not show long-term confidence.

Read it here.

Whether or not this was planned, or simply a calculation on China's part that Mugabe isn't worth the effort, the result is to give SA president Thabo Mbeki considerable leverage in Zimbabwe. Already SA has already agreed to assume part of Mugabe's debt, and has attached conditions that would meliorate some of the worst excesses of Mugabe's "reforms."

Things seem to be falling into place. Mbeki, unable for domestic reasons to take a strong stand against Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe, seems to have maneuvered the situation into a place where he can quietly and without alienating his own population bring the old mad dictator to heel.

Let us sincerely hope so. The suffering in Zimbabwe has to end.

I am getting more and more impressed with Mbeki every month [and his brother ain't chopped liver either].

UPDATE:

Zimonline suggests that, whatever conditions are attached to the SA bailout, Mugabe is likely to wiggle out of them.

President Robert Mugabe is most likely to wriggle out of a cash-for-reforms deal with South Africa once pressure eases on his cornered government, political analysts said on Sunday.

Noting, it was still “early days” to tell whether Harare will stick to a raft of economic and political conditions for a US$1 billion financial bailout from Pretoria, they however said Mugabe and his government had a history of backtracking on their word to South African President Thabo Mbeki and other regional allies.

“We have a history of policy reversals here, Mugabe is adept at wriggling out of deals like this,” head of the University of Zimbabwe (UZ)’s politics and administrative studies department Eldred Masunungure told ZimOnline.

Masungure said there was no consensus within Mugabe’s government and ruling ZANU PF party on the desirability of a negotiated settlement with the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, one of the key conditions set by South Africa.

Read it here.