One of the many things we did not do right in 2000 when we formed the MDC and took on the Zanu PF monolith, was to stop and think through the regional context in which we were operating. I cannot recall this subject coming up in any of our early meetings or training sessions. It was a serious error and we paid for it many times over in the following 14 years.
South Africa did not make that mistake - when we won the February 2000 referendum and went on to nearly defeat the ruling Party in the June elections, they set up a special group to analyse the situation in Zimbabwe and to decide on a policy approach to our affairs. This group was headed by the then Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and had on it several people with specialist knowledge and interest. They concluded that the MDC, a labour based movement, was a threat to the ANC Alliance made up of the ANC, Cosatu (the South African Federation of Trade Unions) and the SACP.
They concluded that if the MDC was allowed to take power in Zimbabwe and made a success of their new responsibilities, that this would encourage a restive labour movement in South Africa to leave the ANC Alliance and fight the next elections on their own. The Workers Party of Brazil reinforced this fear by encouraging Cosatu to strike out and form a Party on the left in South Africa. Cosatu, increasingly aware of the slow drift of the ANC towards the center field, was tempted. The Zimbabwe group was spot on in their analysis.
The result was that over the next 6 years we faced not only a total onslaught from Zanu PF, the JOC and the machinery of the State in Zimbabwe, but behind the scenes, the South African government used its considerable regional and international influence to curb and control the situation against the MDC. So when we won the 2002 Presidential elections, it was South Africa who weighed in and allowed the cover up. When they received their own report on the elections, they suppressed it and to this day it has not been released.
When South Africa finally recognised that the threat from Cosatu was diminishing and that the crisis they had allowed in Zimbabwe was spinning out of hand, they engineered the conditions that brought about the political agreements signed in September 2007 and 2008 that in turn brought the Government of National Unity into being in February 2009. Having created the conditions for a solution they then failed to follow through and allowed Zanu PF to again wrest back power in a totally manipulated and controlled election in mid 2013. Zimbabwe was back to square one - an illegitimate government in place, a collapse of confidence in the State and control by a corrupt and inept administration.
Now South Africa itself is going through a transition of sorts. It is 20 years since South Africa became a democracy (the same period before a serious threat emerged in Zimbabwe to the rule of the liberation Party) and this time it is the ANC that is under threat, both from within and without and the situation in Zimbabwe is doing nothing to help. My friends and contacts in South Africa say that the elections are likely to go as follows: ANC 58 to 62 per cent, DA 25 per cent, EFF 8 per cent and the rest of the field (27 Parties) the balance, 7 per cent.