The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Watching Channel4 News this evening one might have been forgiven for wondering what the media was actually reporting, for it shifted from a headline at the start of the programme that Mugabe was on the brink of conceding power under pressure both from the opposition, the security forces and the South Africans to a point at the end where Morgan Tsvangirai had come out to say that while the results were delayed the people could ‘wait a bit longer’.

According to the U.S. there have already been talks brokered by the South Africans between Tsvangirai’s people and elements within the security forces and ZANU-PF about a transition.

It’s hard to know is this ferment of rumour and counter-rumour merely indicative of events on the ground or does it speak of a genuine splintering of the previously near-monolithic regime. And beyond that there is the issue of how the media attempts to report matters, satisfactorily or not.

It’s odd how little interest the elections (for there are parallel Presidential and General elections) has generated. But it is a fascinating – and in many respects dispiriting – example of the problems that face post-colonial powers as they wrestle with transitions of power. Whether this is ultimately successful, in the sense that the state apparatus will permit such a transition, remains to be seen. Hard not to view the delays as the machinations of a regime simply unable to comprehend the thought of not being in power. And while on the one hand one might argue that the next elections aren’t really that far away and were the MCD to take power there would be plenty of time for ZANU-PF to consolidate the reality is that the networks of patronage that we see in all political structures across the globe, but which are particularly embedded in effectively one-party states, once ruptured result in a rapid withering of influence.

Difficult, if not indeed impossible, to come to terms with that after three decades.