AU post gives ageing Mugabe more credibility

UNLESS mortality intervenes, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s 90th year is set to be one of the more satisfying ones of the Zimbabwean leader’s long political career.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe

The international diplomatic dividends of his victory in last year’s elections, and public support from African leaders, are rolling in and no human obstacle seems likely to stop them.

Last week, his peers at the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, chose him as the first vice-chairman of their assembly, a humdrum title for a potentially high-profile job.

Mr Mugabe was already sure to host the annual summit of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) in August and then take the chairmanship for the next 12 months.

During Mr Mugabe’s years of struggling with Western powers over human rights, the confiscation of white-owned farms and other issues, Sadc has been a vital ally.

It happened again last August when the 16-nation body strongly and swiftly endorsed both the nature and the stunning scale of Mr Mugabe’s electoral rout of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Days later, Sadc agreed to give him its chairman’s baton for 2014-15.

On February 20, the day before Mr Mugabe turns 90, the European Union (EU) will announce whether its longstanding personal travel and other sanctions against him and nine other Zimbabweans are to be lifted, maintained or relaxed.

The measures — as EU diplomats prefer to call them — were eased in 2012 and the remainder are under review in Brussels. "Any decision has to be accepted by all 28 EU countries," the group’s ambassador to Zimbabwe, Aldo Dell’Ariccia, told Business Day on Wednesday.

Former colonial power Britain has always been in the EU subgroup opposing any softening of sanctions but the country will not jeopardise relations with the rest of Europe if it is really isolated over Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe has already notched up one diplomatic coup that shows relations with Europe are improving.

 

"I want to set the record straight: Mr Mugabe has been invited to the EU-Africa summit in Brussels on April 2-3," Mr Dell’Ariccia said.

 

The US has tougher sanctions in place than Europe’s, directed against 113 Zimbabweans and their companies.

"The list of those targeted sanctions is under constant revision," a senior US diplomat in the region said.

Mr Mugabe’s new position at the AU does not mean he will automatically succeed President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania as chairman when the latter steps down in January 2015.

But the deputy role has some status and more crucially will give the veteran Zimbabwean leader opportunities to share the international stage if the Mauritanian allows it.

The bottom line, however, is that because of neo-Marxist policies Zimbabwe’s economy is not recovering and poverty is as bad as ever, a senior Western diplomat said.

"Those are much more important issues for Mr Mugabe to address than the garlands and awards he may receive as a pivotal figure in contemporary African history."

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