The African Union closed its meeting at Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt this week to a worldwide chorus of disappointment and accusations of betrayal provoked by its closing resolution on Zimbabwe. That the continent’s 53 assembled leaders produced, after hours of closed negotiations, a resolution is in itself surprising, as the Union has not really chosen to single out oppressive or violent regimes in the past. Of the half-a-hundred rulers there, a dozen came to power in coups or through insurrections and a similar number have held power for over two decades; yet some of these very men came out strongly against Mugabe behind closed doors. Nevertheless, the resolution did not condemn what the Union’s own observers called election fraud outright, nor did they declare his government illegitimate; it called instead for further mediated talks between Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwean opposition, leading to a power-sharing arrangement. Here is where the greatest sense of betrayal was felt by civil society throughout the continent. For the mediator entrusted with this task is South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has never even seemed close to pressuring Mugabe.

The reasons for Mbeki’s unwillingness to do so have puzzled most observers. Initially it seemed that he was merely reflecting the popular attitude in Africa; for the first few years of Mugabe’s farcical ‘land reform’, there was little sympathy for the white farmers being dispossessed by supposed veterans of the war of independence. It was only when the suspicious youthfulness of the ‘veterans’ became known, as well as the ruinous effects on Zimbabwe’s agriculture and people, that opinion swung towards Morgan Tsangivirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

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