Briefing: Zimbabwe

Each Sunday this blog briefs the basic background information on a major international event recently in the news. This week: Morgan Tsvangirai is sworn in as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai last week finally agreed to a power-sharing arrangement following disputed elections last March. Mr Mugabe will retain the Presidency, but Mr Tsvangirai becomes Prime Minister and the oppostion will control just over half the seats in the cabinet.

Mr Mugabe has ruled in Zimbabwe since the end of white-minority rule in 1980, having previously been a prominent leader of the black opposition and armed-resistance. For years his regime, led by the ZANU-PF party, was on the whole considered a rare African democratic success story, but since the end of the 1990s Zimbabwe has experienced international condemnation and a combination of crippling domestic crises. These began with a land-seizure programme from white farmers, which has in turn triggered famine and hyper-inflation, while more recently the country has also been hit by a cholera epidemic. ZANU-PF has been forced to use brutal repression, harassment of the opposition MDC party and election-rigging to hold onto power.

Yet nevertheless, the opposition won a majority in parliament in elections last March and the candidate of the MDC, Mr Tsvangirai, almost won the Presidential election in the first round, only to withdraw from the contest before the decisive second round was held amid mounting ZANU-PF sponsored violence, leaving Mr Mugabe to win uncontested. Since then the opposition and government have been locked in talks brokered by the largely toothless Southern African Development Community, with a deal appearing in outline last September but only finalised on Wednesday with the swearing in of Mr Tsvangirai as Prime Minister.

While the agreement represents progress from sole ZANU-PF rule, serious doubts remain as to its actual effectiveness. It is unclear how much real authority ZANU-PF, which still controls the army and will jointly oversee the police, has ceded to the MDC, and how co-operative long standing enemies will prove sharing government. Even more worrying, the Zimbabwean economy still lies in utter ruin, and even a united and fully functioning government would find its tasks Herculean. Large-scale international aid from the US and Britain awaits decisive proof that the deal is more than a smokescreen and that Mr Tsvangirai is actually allowed to govern.