11:26 GMT 28th September 2011
Ahead of the summit Mugabe had tried unsuccessfully to block Zuma's appointment as chair of the regional grouping's key three-nation Organ on Politics, Security and Defence, the committee in which member states' acute political problems are managed, or get him to give up his mediation role.
Zuma lost favour with Mugabe after the Organ's Zambia meeting in March, which excoriated Zanu PF for fomenting political violence and undermining the rule of law. Mugabe and some of his most vocal lieutenants, including his acerbic former mouthpiece Jonathan Moyo, roundly laid into the South African leader, declaring that SADC could not tell Zimbabwe what to do.
The Zanu PF strategy ahead of the summit was to argue that Zuma could not be SADC's facilitator in the Zimbabwe dialogue at the same time as assuming chair of the Organ. The argument's basis was weak in the face of historical facts, for Zuma's predecessor Thabo Mbeki had previously held both roles. Angola's President Eduardo Dos Santos, who chaired the summit, dismissed Mugabe's position by confirming Zuma as Zimbabwe mediator. The regional body also announced that it would oppose early elections in the country unless certain preconditions, including constitutional reforms, are met.
Global intelligence firm Stratfor said it appears Luanda and Pretoria agreed at the summit to allow each other to continue their respective dominance in Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Luanda has traditionally seen the DRC, especially the region around the capital Kinshasa, as within Angola's sphere of influence. It has security fears concerning its neighbour, and the two countries also have an ongoing and unresolved dispute over their offshore maritime boundary, an area of lucrative crude oil deposits that Kinshasa would like to get control over.
As for Zuma, it is without question that his country has borne the brunt of Zimbabwe's political and economic implosion, with millions of its citizens now living in South Africa. Economically, the crisis north of the Limpopo has driven the Zimbabwean economy deeper into South Africa's arms. South African consumer goods line Zimbabwe's supermarket shelves, whilst the supermarkets themselves, along with other key areas of the economy, have fallen into the hands of South African investors.
Mugabe has been pushing for elections this year saying he is fed up with the inclusive government. His position is strongly backed by the country's security chiefs and party hawks whose views are widely articulated by the mercurial but shrewd Moyo. Analysts say the hardliners fear that Zuma will interfere with their ability to engineer an elections victory that ignores opposition interests or that foists a faction of Zanu PF resistant to South African influence.
'Those concerns are not unfounded, as South Africa would likely prefer a more pliant government in Zimbabwe that would concede to South African influence, ' Strafor said.
At the Luanda summit, Zuma described the political environment in Zimbabwe as 'poisoned' as he presented a hardhitting report that focused on a roadmap of reforms ahead of fresh elections that might take place later next year. He said events showed continuing conflict, hence there was need to urgently address the problems bedevilling Zimbabwe.
'Reports from Zimbabwe continue to indicate the presence of conflict in that country, at times illustrating harsh exchanges between politicians and members of the armed forces and security forces in Zimbabwe,' Zuma reportedly told SADC summit. The Zimbabwean military has in recent months increasingly encroached into the political arena, prompting MDC leader and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to challenge them to remove their uniforms and join politics proper. A bellicose army general, Douglas Nyikayaramba, described Tsvangirai - ominously - as a 'threat to national security'.
Security sector reform remains an outstanding issue between the inclusive government partners, with Zanu PF steadfastly refusing to entertain the idea. Under the Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed between the power-sharing partners, Zanu PF has control of all the security ministries. The Tsvangirai MDC's standing committee issued a statement ahead of the Luanda summit expressing 'displeasure' with Zuma's road map, which it said did not seek to address fundamental issues including security sector reform to ensure the country's military did not meddle in electoral politics. Zanu PF also rejected the road map saying it wants the timeline for implementation of key reforms to be framed to allow elections to be held this year.
The MDC wants the reconstitution of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and for SADC and African Union election monitors to be deployed to Zimbabwe from six months before to six months after elections. In his report, Zuma said some of the key elements needed for a free and fair poll related to concepts of rule of law, freedom of association and assembly as well as electoral and media reforms.
'There are areas regarding those concepts that are in dispute,' he said. 'Some of them have been referred to the political principals for intervention and, hopefully, those matters will be resolved sooner rather than later.'
Zuma said he was worried about activities which disrupted the smooth path to a clear roadmap expected to put to an end Zimbabwe's political stalemate. 'One of the most unfortunate incidents in recent times was when some people went to the Zimbabwe parliament on June 23 and disrupted a hearing organised by the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs and the Thematic Committee on Human Rights, on the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Bill,' he said.
The incident involved mobs of alleged Zanu PF supporters who stormed parliament chanting their party songs and slogans, beating up journalists and MDC MPs, and intimidating the chair of the committee. Tsvangirai's MDC wants the commission to probe cases of political violence from previous elections whilst Zanu PF prefers the envisaged body to probe any future abuses. Yet more voices, particularly from the Matebeleland region, where Mugabe's shock troops murdered thousands of ethnic Ndebeles in the Gukurahundi massacres in the early 1980s, want the commission to go back and focus on those atrocities as well.
Many of the architects of the Gukurahundi killings are still alive and serving in the security sector and government, including defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, Air Marshall Perrance Shiri, who commanded the notorious army brigade that carried out the murders, and Mugabe himself as commander-in-chief of the defence forces. Understandably, there is strong opposition from the Zanu PF camp for the human rights commission to take a retrospective approach to its work.
As Mugabe left the Angola summit, his frustrations will not have been soothed by the thought oflanding back on home soil. For shortly before he departed for the summit, the nation had been plunged into shock by the bizarre death in a suspicious fire ofthe country's first army general and liberation war commander, Solomon Mujuru.
The general, husband of Vice President Joice Mujuru, was credited with propelling Mugabe to the helm of Zanu PF and remained the only person in the party who could speak his mind freely and challenge the octogenarian leader. He had asked Mugabe to retire on many occasions and was, at the time of his death, strongly opposed to calls for snap elections this year, arguing that it would hurt the nascent economic recovery.
As an iconic power broker in Zanu PF and the hand behind his wife's presidential ambitions, Mujuru's death is seen as having blown the race to succeed Mugabe wide open. Although Joice Mujuru has impeccable struggle credentials of her own, she looks weaker without her powerful husband's backing. In the interim, Mnangagwa, who was a bitter rival of the General's, is seen as having taken the upper hand.
However, the restive soldiers in the officers' mess look set to have a critical say about who takes over, with leading journalists suggesting that their leader, General Constantine Chiwenga, is nursing presidential ambitions of his own. And with Joice Mujuru's recent comments that General Mujuru's death may not have been accidental after all, there is real trepidation that Mugabe's succession may be settled violently.
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