A sigh of relief for comrade Mbeki

Morgan Tsvangirai shakes hand with Robert Mugabe in Harare after reaching an agreement that set grounds for further negotiations on Monday.(File picture from www.aljazeera.net/english)

I was curious, watched the media, saw Zimbabweans flooding all over Johannesburg and watched some of them being attacked in the recent xenophobic attacks, even heard some of them criticising Mbeki for entertaining Mugabe. I was even more curious and decided to buy 'the dream deferred-Thabo Mbeki. This book gave me a clear background and contextual knowlege on the relationship between Mbeki and Mugabe. It is here that I once again came head-on with words such as comrade,neo-imperialism and the famous anti-imperialism debate came to my mind.

 Mbeki's arguments on African reinaissance is that Africans must find African solutions to their own problems and should avoid relying on the West for help. Further, he emphasizes that the West should trade fairly with Africa in the increasingly expanding global capital market as equal partners and not just act as a dumping site for excesses of capitalism.

The African market should be sustainable, and this self sustainability should be supported by the IMF and other regional trading blocks to reduce Africa's dependency on the West for financial assistance like SADC, COMESA and EAC. Of course, Mbeki's approach has led to a few breakthroughs such as the establishment of the AGOA Africa growth and opportunity Act which is actuality encouraging African manufacturers to find market for their products abroad at a fair price.

Another issue in Mbeki's debate is the muscling of the African Union which is a manifestation of the idea that Africa must strive to work towards unity to find solutions to the African problems.
His involvement towards this goal has been directed towards finding solutions to the problems facing Africa. Of course, with South Africa as an economic giant in Africa, he has succeeded in negotiation peace settlements in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan the DRC, Somali and now in the neighboring country Zimbabwe.In Liberia, his efforts led to the first democratic elections in that country that saw the first female president in Africa elected.

Some of this countries have now found peace while others are still battling to find a solution, however, South Africa's and therefore Mbeki's presence is still felt in those countries as they strive to help them come to some form of an agreement through the African Union peace keeping force. And so AU has been quite active in Africa over the past couple of years.

The African Union was involved in helping find a peaceful solution to the Kenyan crisis through the help of the United nations. The African Union is also teaming up once again with the United Nations to find a local solution in Zimbabwe. This is what Mbeki calls African Renaissance. Africa should unite to find local solutions affecting the continent.

I don't mean to sound as if the African renaissance debate was the sole brainchild Mbeki, what I mean here is that Mbeki is following the vision of our African forefathers/leaders like Kwame Nkuruma of Ghana and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya who saw the need for pan-Africanism which saw the birth of the Organization of African Union which later transformed to African Union as it now stands.

There is no doubt that Nkuruma or Kenyatta would be happy at the way in which the AU is currently influencing world politics on affairs concerning the African continent and furthermore, African countries are more bound to trust a deal brokered through their very own body (the AU) because of the perceived suspicion of the so called neo-imperialism.

And so many people raised concern about Mbeki's efforts in finding a peaceful solution to the Zimbabwe crisis and the efforts were later named 'quite diplomacy'. This term was very common in South Africa when referring to Mbeki and can account for the loss of Mbeki's popularity in some quarters of South African politics despite his economic achievements.

Nevertheless, Mbeki has been adamant in his approach, which is, that the people of Zimbabwe must seat together and come to some form of agreement that will be for the benefit of Zimbabwe and that South Africa and SADC will do everything necessary to support such efforts for a peaceful settlement. Unfortunately, this was dismissed as an empty rhetoric.

Mbeki was ambitious on gettimng both sides to reach an agreement to pave ways for a lasting solution rather than regime change parse. The current brokered deal which some suspect might use the Kenyan model has impetus for posterity because it will result, for one thing, to constitutional reforms that will pave way for genuine democratic institutions-such structures are lacking in Zimbabwe and many countries in Africa.

I will refer once again to an article published by Nyaga Munyi titled Kenya's crisis and challenges of democracy in Africa, in the article he argues that Africa’s democratic honeymoon is fast coming to an end, and Kenya’s sudden drift into chaos is a wake-up call across the continent for a more concerted investment in governance programmes.

After a decade of democratic gains, Africa now finds itself in a marshland, and Nigeria, Kenya and even South Africa (Africa pillars) are in a defining moment. The next five years will mark a watershed in the continent’s democratic consolidation.

He claims that the violence in Kenya, due to political discontent, brings into sharp focus the challenges of democracy in Africa and the need for heterodoxity in political governance among African governments and institutions working “to promote democracy” in Africa.

As far Zimbabwe is concerned, Mbeki has emerged as the best mediator because no doubt, and in his biography 'the dream deferred' Mugabe calls him 'young man' which technically elevates Mugabe to an African elder in the eyes of Mbeki. On the other hand, both  are comrades and therefore Mbeki is more likely to convince him of the importance of finding a solution to the crisis in Zimbabwe after all, what are comrades for.