New York Times
By Celia Dugger
15 September 2008
HARARE, Zimbabwe — After almost three decades of untrammeled power, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe on Monday signed an agreement that gives his longtime rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, the authority to shape and carry out government policies as the country’s new prime minister.
The power-sharing deal, a momentous development in one of the world’s most repressive countries, was celebrated by a rambunctious audience of Tsvangirai’s backers who clapped, hooted, danced and chanted from purple upholstered seats.
Among them were party activists who had gone into hiding for months before the June runoff election — widely denounced as a sham — and others who have been victims of state-sponsored violence over the years.
“I came to make sure my big fishes have not betrayed me and to make sure I’m walking in a free country,” said Godknows Nyamweda, 36, a local ward councilor here who rolled up his sleeve to show scars where he said he had been sliced by a knife.
As a brass band struck up a gospel tune, opposition supporters put their own words to it, singing, “Tsvangirai, can I turn to you in hard times?”
The question is whether this deal will help bring better times to a country where the economy has been shrinking for 10 straight years, most people are out of work, millions are hungry, and inflation tops an almost incomprehensible 11 million percent.
Some political analysts think the agreement, almost two months in the making, may be the beginning of the end of Mugabe’s years in power, while others doubt he will relinquish control of the security forces that have enforced his 28-year rule or question whether the two men can work together given the animosities between them.
Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete, chairman of the African Union, voiced the concern on many minds: “Will it hold or will it not? That is the question,” he said.
During the election campaign, Mugabe vowed never to cede power to his rival, and experts believe the 84-year-old president will try to thwart Tsvangirai at every turn.
“He’s been forced into this. I think he recognizes that he has no choice,” David Coltart, a lawmaker from an opposition faction, said of Mugabe. “I have no doubt that he’s going to probably try to buy time. And I think that it’s going to be a very difficult arrangement for Morgan Tsvangirai to manage.”
Still, the tableau of President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, who brokered the deal, drawing together the hands of Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, leader of a small opposition faction, in a blaze of flash bulbs raised hopes that change is coming.
Tsvangirai — who’s been beaten, jailed and tried for treason until a court dismissed the charges — said Monday that he struck the deal despite misgivings.
“I have signed this agreement because my belief in Zimbabwe and its people runs deeper than the scars I bear from the struggle,” he said.
Mugabe himself said as he spoke for the better part of an hour: “We are committed to the deal. We will do our best.”
The deal, though signed, is not yet done. Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara, who will be one of two deputy prime ministers, put their names to it with great fanfare before heads of state from across Africa, but a critical element is still unresolved: How they will divvy up responsibility for the most powerful state institutions, including the army, the police and the finance ministry.
As hundreds of people practically stampeded the auditorium Monday for the ceremony, the men were still negotiating which party would get what ministries.
Under the terms of the deal, the two opposition parties are to get 16 ministries to the governing party’s 15. It is the opposition’s control of slightly more than half the ministries, combined with its narrow majority in Parliament that has bolstered its hopes that it will finally gain entry to Zimbabwe’s power structure. Unless the opposition Movement for Democratic Change takes over key ministries from the governing party, ZANU-PF, which has been in power since 1980, Britain and the U.S. are unlikely to provide the infusion of aid needed to rebuild the country.
“Until we see that, we have to reserve judgment,” Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer, the senior U.S. diplomat for Africa, said Monday.
Tsvangirai won 48 percent of the vote to Mugabe’s 43 percent in the March general election, but he boycotted the runoff because he said he didn’t want his supporters to be killed for voting for him.
Under the deal, Mugabe, Tsvangirai and the Cabinet will share executive authority.
“It looks like two parallel governments, and it remains to be seen if they will come together,” said Tiseke Kasambala, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.