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CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL//NOFORN SECRET SECRET//NOFORN UNCLASSIFIED UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

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### Viewing cable 07HARARE638, The End is Nigh

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Reference ID | Date | Classification | Origin
--- | --- | --- | ---
07HARARE638 | 2007-07-13 10:10 | CONFIDENTIAL | Embassy Harare

`

    VZCZCXRO1711
    PP RUEHMR RUEHRN
    DE RUEHSB #0638/01 1941004
    ZNY CCCCC ZZH
    P 131004Z JUL 07
    FM AMEMBASSY HARARE
    TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 1696
    INFO RUCNSAD/SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY
    RUEHUJA/AMEMBASSY ABUJA 1648
    RUEHAR/AMEMBASSY ACCRA 1516
    RUEHDS/AMEMBASSY ADDIS ABABA 1652
    RUEHBS/AMEMBASSY BRUSSELS 0228
    RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA 0918
    RUEHDK/AMEMBASSY DAKAR 1281
    RUEHKM/AMEMBASSY KAMPALA 1708
    RUEHNR/AMEMBASSY NAIROBI 4125
    RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 1478
    RUEHRO/AMEMBASSY ROME 2142
    RUEPGBA/CDR USEUCOM INTEL VAIHINGEN GE
    RHEHAAA/NSC WASHDC
    RUFOADA/JAC MOLESWORTH RAF MOLESWORTH UK
    RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 1869

` `

    C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 HARARE 000638

    SIPDIS

    SIPDIS

    DEPARTMENT FOR P, AF, AND AF/S FOR MOZENA AND HILL,
    NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR B.
    PITTMAN AND B. LEO; USAID FOR M. COPSON AND E. LOKEN

    E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/12/2017
    TAGS: PGOV PREL ZI
    SUBJECT: The End is Nigh

    Classified By: Ambassador Christopher W. Dell under Section 1.4b/d

    ¶1.  (C)  Having said my piece repeatedly over the last three years,
    I won't offer a lengthy prescription for our Zimbabwe
    policy.  My views can be stated very simply as stay the
    course and prepare for change.  Our policy is working and it's
    helping to drive change here.  What is required is simply the grit,
    determination and focus to see this through.  Then, when the changes
    finally come we must be ready to move quickly to help consolidate
    the new dispensation.

    THE SITUATION

    ¶2.  (C)  Robert Mugabe has survived for so long because he is more
    clever and more ruthless than any other politician in
    Zimbabwe.  To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant
    tactitian and has long thrived on his ability to abruptly
    change the rules of the game, radicalize the political
    dynamic and force everyone else to react to his agenda.
    However, he is fundamentally hampered by several factors:
    his ego and belief in his own infallibility; his obsessive
    focus on the past as a justification for everything in the
    present and future; his deep ignorance on economic issues
    (coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him
    the authority to suspend the laws of economics, including
    supply and demand); and his essentially short-term,
    tactical style.

    ¶3.  (C)  While his tactical skills have kept him in power for 27
    years, over the last seven this has only been achieved by a
    series of populist, but destructive and ultimately
    self-defeating moves.  In reaction to losing the 2000
    referendum on the constitution, a vengeful Mugabe unleashed
    his QGreen BombersQ to commit land reform and in the
    process he destroyed ZimbabweQs agricultural sector, once the
    bedrock of the economy.  While thousands of white farmers
    saw their properties seized, hundreds of thousands of black
    Zimbabweans lost their livelihoods and were reduced to utter
    poverty.  In 2005, having been forced to steal victory by
    manipulating the results of an election he lost, Mugabe
    lashed out again, punishing the urban populace by launching
    Operation Murambatsvina.  The result was wholesale
    destruction of the informal sector, on which as much as
    70-80 percent of urban dwellers had depended, and the
    uprooting of 700,000 Zimbabweans.  The current inflationary
    cycle really began with Murambatsvina, as rents and prices
    grew in response to a decrease in supply.

    ¶4.  (C)  And now, faced with the hyperinflationary consequences
    of his ruinous fiscal policies and growing reliance on the
    printing press to keep his government running, Mugabe has
    launched Operation Slash Prices.  This has once again given
    him a very temporary boost in popularity (especially among
    the police, who have led the looting of retail outlets and
    now seem well positioned to take a leading role in the
    black market economy) at the cost of terrible damage to the
    country and people.  Many small grocery and shop owners,
    traders, etc., will be wiped out; the shelves are
    increasingly bare; hunger, fear, and tension are growing;
    fuel has disappeared.  When the shelves are still empty
    this time next week, the popular appeal of the price roll
    back will evaporate and the government simply doesnQt have
    the resources to replace the entire private commercial
    sector and keep Zimbabweans fed.  It may attempt to do so
    by printing more money, adding even more inflationary
    pressure on a system already reeling from the GOZQs
    quasi-fiscal lunacy combined with the price impact of
    pervasive shortages.  The increasingly worthless Zim dollar
    is likely to collapse as a unit of trade in the near
    future, depriving the GOZ of its last economic tool other
    than sheer thuggery and theft of othersQ assets.

    ¶5.  (C)  With all this in view, IQm convinced the end is not

    HARARE 00000638  002 OF 004

    far off for the Mugabe regime.  Of course, my predecessors
    and many other observers have all said the same thing, and
    yet Mugabe is still with us.  I think this time could prove
    different, however, because for the first time the
    president is under intensifying pressure simultaneously on
    the economic, political and international fronts.  In the
    past, he could always play one of these off against the
    other, using economic moves to counter political pressure
    or playing the old colonial/race/imperialist themes to buy
    himself breathing room regionally and internationally.  But
    he is running out of options and in the swirling gases of
    the new Zimbabwean constellation that is starting to form,
    the economic, political and international pressures are
    concentrating on Mugabe himself.  Our ZANU-PF contacts are
    virtually unanimous in saying reform is desperately needed,
    but won't happen while the Old Man is there, and therefore
    he must go (finding the courage to make that happen is
    another matter, however, but even that may be coming closer).
    This is not some sudden awakening on the road to
    Damascus, but a reflection of the pain even party insiders
    increasingly feel over the economic meltdown.  We also get
    regular, albeit anecdotal, reports of angry and
    increasingly open mutterings against Mugabe even in ZANU-PF's
    traditional rural bastions.   Beginning in March, the
    other SADC leaders finally recognized (in the wake of the
    terrible beatings of March 11 and the international outcry
    that followed Q another self-inflicted wound for Mugabe)
    that Zimbabwe is a problem they need to address.  Thabo
    Mbeki appears committed to a successful mediation and is
    reportedly increasingly irritated with MugabeQs efforts to
    manipulate him or blow him off altogether.  If Mugabe
    judges that he still commands all he surveys by virtue of
    being the elder statesman on the scene, he may be
    committing yet another serious blunder.  Finally, one does
    well to recall that the only serious civil disturbances
    here in a decade came in 1998 over bread shortages, showing
    that even the famously passive Shona people have their
    limits.  The terror and oppression of the
    intervening years have cowed people, but itQs anyoneQs guess
    whether their fear or their anger will win out in the end.

    WHAT WILL THE END LOOK LIKE?

    ¶6.  (C)  This is the big, unanswerable question.  One thing
    at least is certain, Mugabe will not wake up one morning a
    changed man, resolved to set right all he has wrought.  He
    will not go quietly nor without a fight.  He will cling to
    power at all costs and the costs be damned, he deserves to
    rule by virtue of the liberation struggle and land reform and
    the people of Zimbabwe have let him down by failing to
    appreciate this, thus he neednQt worry about their
    well-being.  The only scenario in which he might agree to
    go with a modicum of good grace is one in which he
    concludes that the only way to end his days a free man is
    by leaving State House.  I judge that he is still a long
    way from this conclusion and will fight on for now.

    ¶7.  (C)  The optimal outcome, of course, and the only one that
    doesnQt bring with it a huge risk of violence and conflict, is
    a genuinely free and fair election, under international
    supervision.  The Mbeki mediation offers the best, albeit
    very slim, hope of getting there.  However, as Pretoria
    grows more and more worried about the chaos to its north
    and President MbekiQs patience with MugabeQs antics wears
    thin, the prospects for serious South African engagement
    may be growing.  Thus, this effort deserves all the support
    and backing we can muster.  Less attractive is the idea of
    a South African-brokered transitional arrangement or
    government of national unity.  Mbeki has always favored
    stability and in his mind this means a ZANU-PF-led GNU, with
    perhaps a few MDC additions.  This solution is more likely
    to prolong than resolve the crisis and we must guard
    against letting Pretoria dictate an outcome which

    HARARE 00000638  003 OF 004

    perpetuates the status quo at the expense of real change
    and reform.

    ¶8.  (C)  The other scenarios are all less attractive:  a popular
    uprising would inevitably entail a bloodbath, even if it
    were ultimately successful; MugabeQs sudden, unexpected
    death would set off a stampede for power among ZANU-PF
    heavy weights; a palace coup, whether initiated within
    ZANU-PF or from the military - in which Mugabe is removed,
    killed, exiled or otherwise disposed of, could well devolve
    into open conflict between the contending successors.   Similarly,
    some form of "constitutional coup" i.e., a change at the top
    engineered within the framework of ZANU-PFQs "legitimate"
    structures could well prove to be merely the opening bell
    in a prolonged power struggle.  None of the players is
    likely to go quietly into the night without giving everything
    they have, including calling on
    their supporters in the security services. Moreover, experience
    elsewhere would suggest that whoever comes out on top
    initially will struggle, and more than likely fail, to halt
    the economic collapse.  Thus, there is a good prospect of
    not one but a series of rapid-fire Qtransitions,Q until
    some new, stable dispensation is reached.

    ¶9.  (C)  The final, and probably worst, possibility is that Mugabe
    concludes he can settle for ruling over a rump Zimbabwe,
    maintaining control over Harare and the Mashona heartland,
    the critical forces of the National Reserve Force and CIO
    and a few key assets Q gold, diamonds, platinum and Air
    Zimbabwe to fund the good times.  Under this scenario the
    rest of the country, in one of the comradeQs favorite
    phrases, could Qgo hang,Q leaving it to the international
    community to stave off the worst humanitarian consequences.

    WHAT OF THE OPPOSITION?

    ¶10.  (C)  ZimbabweQs opposition is far from ideal and I leave
    convinced that had we had different partners we could have
    achieved more already.  But you have to play the hand youQre dealt.
    With that in mind, the current leadership has little executive
    experience and will require massive hand holding and assistance
    should they ever come to power.

    ¶11.  (C)  Morgan Tsvangarai is a brave, committed man and, by and
    large, a democrat.  He is also the only player on the scene
    right now with real star quality and the ability to rally
    the masses.  But Tsvangarai is also a flawed figure, not
    readily open to advice, indecisive and with questionable
    judgment in selecting those around him.  He is the indispensable
    element for opposition success, but possibly an albatross around
    t heir necks once in power.  In short, he is a kind of Lech Walesa
    character:  Zimbabwe needs him, but should not rely on his executive
    abilities to lead the country's recovery.  Arthur Mutambara is young
    and ambitious, attracted to radical, anti-western rhetoric and
    smart as a whip.  But, in many respects heQs a light-weight
    who has spent too much time reading U.S. campaign messaging
    manuals and too little thinking about the real issues.  Welshman
    Ncube has proven to be a deeply divisive
    and destructive player in the opposition ranks and the
    sooner he is pushed off the stage, the better.  But he is
    useful to many, including the regime and South Africa, so
    is probably a cross to be borne for some time yet.  The
    prospects for healing the rift within the MDC seem dim,
    which is a totally unnecessary self-inflicted wound on
    their part this time.  With few exceptions Q Tendayi Biti,
    Nelson Chamisa Q the talent is thin below the top ranks.
    The great saving grace of the opposition is likely to be
    found in the diaspora.  Most of ZimbabweQs best
    professionals, entrepreneurs, businessmen and women, etc.,
    have fled the country.  They are the oppositionQs natural
    allies and it is encouraging to see signs, particularly in
    South Africa and the UK, that these people are talking,

    HARARE 00000638  004 OF 004

    sharing ideas, developing plans and thinking together about
    future recovery.

    ¶12.  (C)  Unfortunately, among the MDCQs flaws is its inability to
    work more effectively with the rest of civil society.  The
    blame for this can be shared on both sides (many civil
    society groups, like the NCA, are single-issue focused and
    take the overall dynamic in unhelpful directions; others,
    like WOZA, insist on going it alone as a matter of
    principle), but ultimately it falls to the MDC as the
    largest and the only true political party, to show the
    way.  Once again, however, these are natural allies and
    they have more reason to work together than fight against each
    other.

    STAYING THE COURSE, PREPARING FOR CHANGE

    ¶13.  (C)  If I am right and change is in the offing, we need to
    step up our preparations.  The work done over the last year on
    transition planning has been extremely useful, both for
    stimulating a fresh look at our own assumptions and plans
    and for forging a common approach among the traditional
    donor community.  But the process has lagged since the
    meetings in March in London and should be re-energized.  It is
    encouraging in this respect that USAID Washington has
    engaged the Mission here in discussing how we would use
    additional resources in response to a genuinely
    reform-minded government .  I hope this will continue and
    the good work done so far will survive the usual
    bloodletting of the budget process.

    ¶14.  (C)  The official media has had a field day recently whooping
    that "Dell leaves Zimbabwe a failed man".  That's not quite
    how it looks from here.  I believe that the firm
    U.S. stance, the willingness to speak out and stand up,
    have contributed to the accelerating pace of change.
    Mugabe and his henchman are like bullies everywhere:  if
    they can intimidate you they will.  But ther're not used to
    someone standing up to them and fighting back.  It catches them
    off guard and that's when they make mistakes. The howls of protest
    over critical  statements from Washington or negative coverage
    on CNN are the clearest proof of how this hurts them.  Ditto
    the squeals over Qillegal sanctions.Q  In addition, the regime
    has become so used to calling the shots and dictating the
    pace that the merest stumble panics them.  Many local
    observers have noted that Mugabe is panicked and
    desperate about hyperinflation at the moment, and hence heQs
    making mistakes.  Possibly fatal mistakes.  We need to
    keep the pressure on in order to keep Mugabe off his game
    and on his back foot, relying on his own shortcomings to do
    him in.  Equally important is an active U.S. leadership
    role in the international community.  The UK is ham-strung
    by its colonial past and domestic politics, thus, letting them
    set the pace alone merely limits our effectiveness.  The EU is
    divided between the hard north and its soft southern
    underbelly.  The Africans are only now beginning to find
    their voice.  Rock solid partners like Australia donQt
    pack enough punch to step out front and the UN is a
    non-player.  Thus it falls to the U.S., once again, to take
    the lead, to say and do the hard things and to set the agenda.
    Hundreds, maybe thousands, of ordinary Zimbabweans of all
    kinds have told me that our clear, forthright stance has
    given them hope and the courage to hang on.  By this regimeQs
    standards, acting in the interests of the people may indeed be
    considered a failure.  But I believe that the opposite is true,
    and that we can be justifiably proud that in Zimbabwe we have
    helped advance the PresidentQs freedom Agenda.  The people of
    this country know it and recognize it and that is the true
    touchstone of our success here.

    DELL

`