What dangers threatened Mugabe to abandon absolute power and seek GNU?

If you see a frog hopping in the midday heat as if his very life depends on each hop, you can be sure something is after him and his life is indeed on the line!

By the time Zimbabwe held its elections last year one thing was clear Mugabe went to see the back of the GNU, "the two headed monster", he called it.

He rigged the elections securing victory for himself and a very comfortable Zanu-PF majority in parliament.

The last thing one expected is Mugabe, a year after the rigged elections, coming back and seeking GNU mark two with the very man, Morgan Tsvangirai, whom he had nothing but contempt.

"The economic transformation we want to achieve requires the voice of everyone, including the opposition and civic society," said Zanu-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo.

So what was it that had spooked the Mugabe, the megalomania who have wanted nothing short of absolute power, to coming out hopping in the midday heat seeking yet another power sharing arrangement with a partner he detests?

Rigging the 2013 elections had proven to be easier than Mugabe had dared to imagine, thanks to the failure by MDC to get even one democratic reforms implemented.

Mugabe had gone out of his way to ensure the wanton violence of 2008 was not repeated. His war vets, party thugs like Chipangano and the secretive CIO were straining on the leash to be let lose but he did manage to keep them all penned in.

There was no violence.

Mugabe had his then Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Patrick Chinamasa, fight a rear-guard battle as to why none of the democratic reforms had been implemented by stating that it was MDC who had failed to table even one reform throughout the five-year life of GNU.

Chinamasa hammered that point to all foreign ambassadors accredited to Zimbabwe and to the world at large before the elections. The point being that Mugabe could not blamed for taking advantage of the highly partisan position in the Police, ZEC, public media, judiciary, etc. to help him win the elections.

It was MDC, not him, who should have reformed these institutions to end their partisan bias! His bit was to restrain his violent thugs and he did that!

So, yes, Mugabe expected the everyone to accept his electoral victory and that Zanu-PF was the only game in town.

The Americans and a few Western countries refused outright to accept the rigged elections as legitimate. The EU did the same but has since been toying with the idea of accepting the result. SADC, AU and notably countries like China accept Mugabe's electoral victory.

Whilst there was division on the political front there was complete unanimity of the financial front; no country was prepared to bankroll Mugabe's $27 billion ZimAsset economic recovery plan. Not even China contributed even one Yuan into the begging bowl.

All the countries agreed the money will be wasted given that Mugabe had done nothing to address the underlying causes of the country's economic meltdown. For the last 12 months Mugabe has begged and tried every dirty trick in the book to get nations, banks and institutions to contribute something into his ZimAsset begging bowl. No one was fooled; he failed to get even a penny with which to rattle the bowl.

---------------------------
Nomusa Garikai can be contacted at zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com