The Key to Political Progress

from Business Day

Zimbabwe’s government of national unity, scarcely a year old, is gradually collapsing amid continuing violence and recriminations.

Any viable strategy for change must grapple with the brutal fact that the problem lies with the state and the entrenched venality of its political system. Zimbabwe has passed the point at which the state and its institutions can be salvaged through clever reforms. Many within the country’s ruling class have profited personally from a decade of social misery and economic ruin. They maintain a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo, with its facade of democratic institutions and contrasting reality of elite bargains and repressive politics....

But behind that is its apprehension that there are no sufficiently credible and powerful alternatives to Mugabe.