In a recent article in The Mail & Guardian Michael Georgy makes the case that the deadlock in Zimbabwe represents yet another failure for Thabo Mbeki, another sign of his waning credibility and fading influence at home and abroad.
The case seems pretty strong. Yet something about this argument does not strike me as being quite right or quite fair. Certainly Mbeki deserves plenty of blame for letting the Zimbabwe sore fester for as long as it has without taking stronger action, without pushing for a resolution sooner, without taking more seriously his mandate to broker peace on the behalf of SADC, without ever, to this day, truly condemning Robert Mugabe or at minimum what mugabe allowed to happen to his country. And as a consequence things have gotten to where they are, for which Thabo Mbeki is one of many actors who deserves his share of the blame.
But at the same time, Mbeki is in no position to force an agreement right now. Cliches about horses and water and forcing them to d...
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