Help Zim in its hour of need

‘THE crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci wrote these words in his

decades ago, warning about the dangers of interregnums – intervals between the suspension of a normal government or a monarch’s reign and the installation of a new regime or ruler.

At the best of times such critical intervals can be dangerous, but they can be downright precarious for a nation such as Zimbabwe not accustomed to smooth, peaceful handovers and teeming with power-hungry crocodilian intrigants with scant regard for the interests of the general populace.

The morbid symptoms Gramsci warned about are plentiful in and outside the ruling Zanu-pf which supported President Robert Mugabe for almost four decades of his variegated rule.

Since the sacking of former vice-president Emmerson “The Crocodile” Mnangagwa, some dangerous manoeuvres have culminated in the “soft coup” that has virtually abruptly ended Mugabe’s reign and stopped his wife and her supporters dead in their tracks.

Fortunately, the helter-skelter has so far been “broadly constitutional” and peaceful. And, for the sake of Zimbabwe, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and the whole of Africa, we hope this relatively peaceful climate continues until a solution to the current impasse is found.

President Jacob Zuma has a key role to play in helping shorten the interregnum. While he and former president Thabo Mbeki, do not have a good track record in dealing with the Zimbabwean crisis in the eyes of many who regard Mugabe more as a crooked dictator than a liberation hero, Zuma has a key role to play.

South Africa currently chairs SADC and Zuma, like him or not, remains the go-to person able to communicate with the beleaguered 93-year-old president.

Having observed the crumbling of the Global Political Agreement Mbeki helped put together in 2013, South Africa has learnt from that failed experiment.

South Africa has also had its version of a so-called soft coup in which Mbeki didn’t finish his second term. And as one of our closest neighbours, Zimbabwe is stuck with us as much as South Africa is with that nation yearning for a new beginning. We have no choice but to help Zimbabwe traverse quickly and safely out of this impasse.