Makumbe's suggestion seems plausable but in reality it does not work. What is needed in Zimbabwe is the diffusion of tension and polarization. The Government of National Unity (GNU) provides a mechanism that brings together the belligerants and give them the opportunity to mend ways in a conciliatory manner, which the "transitional authority", whatever that really means, will not provide such an opportunity. We are looking for solutions that take Zimbabwe to another level rather than solutions that merely transfer power to individuals.

I have always believed that John Makumbe is a political scientist. Now I have other ideas.

Opendemocracy approves as
E.U. Capitalists Tightens the Screws on Cholera Weakened Zimbabwe

http://www.opednews.com/articles/EU-Capitalist-Neocoloniali-by-Jay-Janson-090131-154.html

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The cruel neo-colonialist image the European Union creates for itself in African eyes seems to be of little concern, as it continues its financial war on Zimbabwe causing extreme suffering. An investment driven E.U., U.K., U.S. conspiracy depends on silence from conglomerate owned international media, its dutiful disinformation and propaganda that Robert Mugabe, is the sole author of the destruction of his own nation’s economy

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Amazing how the cruel neo-colonialist image the European Union creates for itself in African eyes seems to be of little concern, as it goes on causing Zimbabweans extreme suffering.

The heartless imperialist machinations of the E.U., U.K., U.S. conspiracy depend on the silence of conglomerate owned cartelized international media and its dutifully insistent disinformation and propaganda that one man, Robert Mugabe, is the sole author of the destruction of his own nation’s economy - inconceivable, even if twice the corruption attributed to him by Western media were true.

The main false accusation repeated over and over again is that Mugabe ruined the economy by passing laws taking well producing farms away from their efficient white farmers. Decades of brutal financial sabotage and economic warfare against Zimbabwe, ever since Mugabe refused to go along with IMF demands, and now even the knowledge of the cholera epidemic makes no difference to European political leaders as their national and international banking institutions seek to put additional pressure. Lets review the past week:

"Zimbabwe Summit Begins as E.U. Imposes Fresh Sanctions" by Agence France-Press,
Jan. 26, 2009, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/world/africa/27zimbabwe.html

"Heads of state from the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) gathered Monday in a renewed bid to end Zimbabwe's political crisis...

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels announced 60 more names of people close to Mugabe or their families would be added to a travel-ban list, bringing the number of people on the list to over 200."

The number of companies whose assets in Europe must be frozen were increased to 40 and for the first time European-based firms are included. ...

Monday's talks take place as the European Union slapped fresh sanctions on Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe, which is battling a cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 2,800 people and infected more than 50,000."

Regional leaders see Zimbabwe's unity deal, which allows Mugabe to remain president while Tsvangirai becomes prime minister, as the best chance to rescue the country from political and economic meltdown"

But EU, UK and US want the man they have funded, and had their media support, to have total power to sell off the country to private interests abroad as the price to release the monetary stranglehold that has successfully crippled the Zimbabwe economy. Future Western capital growth prospects are are being enhanced with long term arrangements for destruction and scarcity in Zimbabwe. (UN Charter prohibitions against the use of sanctions and blocking access to international fiduciary institutions are of no consequent protection for vulnerable nations.)

Their man Tsvangirai won more votes in the first round of a presidential election, but left Zimbabwe and refused to be in the second round run-off, claiming persecution. Since then, all the former colonial powers have demanded Mugabe's head.

However, with the exception of the collaborating Presidents of Kenya and Botswana, African leaders are unwilling to help the Western powers ‘show Mugabe the door’ (a favorite colloquialism employed by the righteous sounding spokespersons of the Western bloc).

In any case, the West continues to pretend to favor parliamentary ‘democracy’, calculating that it can be bent to its investment purposes through control of information by international media cartels and international sabotage of the economy of Zimbabwe as necessary.

The neo-colonialist method of taking financial control of an African nation is much cleaner than the old way - by force of arms and white occupation.

Once in a while, the older method still crops up, as when in 2004, an airplane of the Honourable Sir Mark Thatcher, 2nd Baronet, the son of the Right Honorable Baroness Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister, by marriage a multi-millionaire, was
impounded in Zimbabwe as his co-conspiritor sought to pick up guns on the way to overthrow the government of oil rich Equatorial Guinea. (Thatcher was fined three million rand ($500,000) and received a four-year suspended jail sentence upon an unbelievable plea of innocence, telling the South African judge he was under the impression the project was an air ambulance service to help the impoverished of Africa.)

Tuesday the SADC 15-nation grouping gave its approval of Mugabe going ahead with forming a government with or without Tsvangirai participation - it was SADC’s fifth attempt to secure a deal on forming a unity government - it agreed that opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai should be sworn in as prime minister by February 11.

Tsvangirai’s MDC answered, "Quite clearly the conclusions reached as reflected in the communiqué fall far short of our expectations". (And those of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well, we might assume. She was trying to get South African pressure on Mugabe to accede to Tsvangirai demands.)

However, on Wednesday, Tsvangirai gave in and agreed in principle to the forming of a unity government and now prepares to return to Zimbabwe, from a self-imposed exile.

Now that the 15 nation Southern Africa Development Community has again been supportive of Mugabe, and with the West’s candidate for control of Zimbabwe becoming part of its government, will the West be forced to reluctantly lessen its economic war to make their inside man look good?

Additional background on the Zimbabwe - Western powers confrontation can be read in an earlier OEN article published Dec.10, 2007:

Descendants of Bloody Racist Colonizers of Africa Pretend to Care, Keep Sanctions on Zimbabwe

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jay_jans_071210_descendents_of_blood.htm

“A Theater of the Absurd, Europeans speak out for democracy in Africa.”

A freaky, preposterous, ridiculously self-righteous pretense of concern for the suffering in Zimbabwe from white prime ministers of European nations that had for centuries killed, enslaved, plundered, and exploited Africans mercilessly and still bilk the continent through their domination of powerful unscrupulous international financial and trade organizations.

80-year-old President Robert Mugabe, who is seen by millions of Africans as a liberator, continues to be condemned by white EU leaders who continue a choking financial embargo against Zimbabwe. These celebrity politician grandchildren of the masters of Africa’s murderous military occupation are silent about their cruel punishing of Zimbabwe over many years with strict and severe EU and US economic sanctions.

The presidents of Namibia and Angola have urged Western nations to lift the sanctions imposed against Zimbabwe, saying they are "illegal and unfair".

Senegal’s president, Abdoulaye Wade, accused Europe of trying to impose a “straitjacket” on Africa.”

What is rarely mentioned in Western media (naturally unrelentingly Capitalist in slant), is the frustration of the people of Zimbabwe and other former colonies, that white ‘owners’ of most of the best land so many decades after colonial liberation still refuse to negotiate and accept a fairer distribution of the land. Most incredibly not withstanding that the African governments have in large allowed the whites to keep titles to so much land stolen under imperial colonialism – and that Mugabe’s government had for years protected white ownership from squatters and demands of squatters rights, always in the name of continued stable production and benefit for all Zimbabweans, while European investors threatened punitive action if the status quo be changed in any meaningful way.

The tight net of connections and relationships between European financial grip and profits and local whites goes unreported in all this sanctimonious criticism of Mugabe for civil rights abuses and praise for an opportunistic opposition allied with, and supported by big media and money from abroad.
“Africa doesn’t want charity or paternalism,” said Alpha Oumar Konaré, the chairman of the African Union, “We want to play in the global economy but with new rules.”

Its not only Africa, but the whole third world that wants out from under first world control and its program for freedom for foreign investor profits, supported by faked democracy through investor control of a ‘free’ press, not to mention covert support for government undermining violence and currency manipulation.

All this is not malicious in intent, simply the mindless requirement that capital have growth and profit from the work or lack of work of subjected human beings everywhere.”

PRESIDENT ROBERT MUGABE, SPEAKING AT THE 62 ND SESSION OF THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY-NY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2007. 

"The West still negates our sovereignties by way of control of our resources, in the process making us mere chattels in our own lands, mere minders of its transnational interests. In my own country and other sister states in Southern Africa, the most visible form of this control has been over land despoiled from us at the onset of British colonialism.

That control largely persists , although it stands firmly challenged in Zimbabwe, thereby triggering the current stand-off between us and Britain, supported by her cousin , most notably the United States and Australia. 

Mr Bush, Mr Blair and now Mr Brown's sense of human rights precludes our people's right to their God-given resources, which in their view must be controlled by their kith and kin. I am termed dictator because I have rejected this supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists.

Clearly the history of the struggle for our national and people's rights is unknown to the president of the United states of America. He thinks the declaration of Human rights starts with his term in office !

He thinks she can introduce to us , who bore the brunt of fighting for the freedoms of our peoples, the virtues of the Universal Declaration of Human rights. What rank Hypocrisy !

I lost 11 precious years  of my life in jail of a white man whose freedom and well-being I have assured from the first day of Zimbabwe's independence. I lost a further 15 years fighting white injustice in my country.

Ian Smith is responsible for the death of well over 50,000 of my people. I bear scars of tyranny which Britain and America condoned. I meet his victims everyday. Yet he walks free. He farms free. He talks freely, associates freely under a black government. We taught him democracy. We gave him back his humanity.

He would have faced a different fate here (in the US) and in Europe if the 50,000 he killed were Europeans. Africa has not called for a Nuremberg trial against the white world which committed heinous crimes against its own humanity. It has not hunted perpetrators of this genocide , many of whom live up to this day , nor has it got reparations from those who offended against it. Instead, it is Africa which is in the dock, facing trial from the same world  that persecuted it for centuries.

The colonial sun set a long time ago, in 1980 in the case of Zimbabwe , and hence Zimbabwe will never be  a colony again, NEVER !

We do not deserve sanctions. We are Zimbabweans and we know how to deal with our problems. We have done so in the past, well before Bush and Brown were known politically. We have our own regional and continental organizations and communities.

Write, call Obama 202 456 1414. Lift sanctions on poor Zimbabwe!

Three votes so far and rather low rating as of this hour for the article! We wait to see subsequent responses.

Interestingly, the writer rightly argues the point that, contrary to older ways of believing things in Africa: that "half-bread" is better than none, has run out of steam!

The paper also tends to hesitate over the saying that it takes two to tango, because the two never existed. It is possible to interpret Zimbabwe political realities in this and many other senses. Quite pitiful and humiliating!

Is there peace to say give it a chance? President Mugabe is old. Surely even if he wanted, it is clearly true that he cannot be for ever!

Many must be wondering what makes South Africa so understanding, patient and diplomatically tactful on Zimbabwe political distress. Is it because giving peace a chance is a thing they still fancy necessary in spite of all the humiliations?

Our world is dotted here and there with experiences and lessons. For the optimist - the less naive], can there still be a reason to see the horizon and build the hope needed for change. NEW TIMES DO BRING NEW THINGS. Forget the past, open your hearts, find and agree on all openings that work the way to peace, a new political start - even if not yet perfect - at least to deal with the economic and social mess. Avoid living in the past to end the consolidation of negative psychology. If the long tunnel is open, the light from one end is surely likely to lead unto the light at the other end. It will need care, understanding and perseverance - what truly appears for some to give credit to the South African government endeavours and sacrifices.

African blacks and whites must now see the reason for them to live side-by-side, sharing to openly rediscover themselves and the importance of doing that in political, economic and socio-cultural senses.