Zimbabwe: Power Sharing Path Strewn With Danger

Ask Zimbabwe's opposition leaders about sharing power with Robert Mugabe and they point back a couple of decades to the last time he lured a political opponent into his fold.

His arch-foe, Joshua Nkomo, accepted the position of vice president and assurances of a real slice of power when he could no longer hold out against the army's assault on people in his Matabeleland stronghold, which left about 20,000 murdered. But Mugabe swiftly neutered his rival and tightened his stranglehold on power.

Today, Mugabe looks more vulnerable. He's lost the support of the people to Morgan Tsvangirai, hyperinflation is wiping out the economy, and his crimes are no longer quite so widely tolerated.

But even though Mugabe has been forced to acknowledge his problems by agreeing to discuss power sharing with Tsvangirai, a man he despises, there is no reason to believe he is about to give up. Zimbabwe's president - and those around him at the top of Zanu-PF - have not pursued the violent and destructive policies that have kept them in power as their popularity collapsed over the past decade only to give it all away now at the negotiating table.

The opposition suspects Mugabe plans to fall back on the Nkomo option - lure the Movement for Democratic Change in, then devour it. Zanu-PF has already softened up the MDC by terrorizing many of its supporters into submission, just as it did Nkomo's. The whole intent, after all, was to negotiate from a position of strength, if Zimbabwe's rulers were forced to negotiate at all.

For that reason, the opposition is hostile to any deal that legitimizes Mugabe's fraudulent election victory and it is wary of a power-sharing deal in which it is a subordinate partner.

Still, there are lessons in recent history for Mugabe too. Ian Smith, the prime minister of rebel Rhodesia, claimed white rule was not defeated by the black liberation armies but by the "great betrayal" of South Africa's apartheid-era leader, John Vorster, cutting off support.

Now Jacob Zuma is looming over the horizon as the man likely to succeed Thabo Mbeki. Zuma's backers, particularly the unions, are keen to pull the plug on Zimbabwe's leader. Like Smith, Mugabe may yet find that it is not his enemies but those he thought were his natural allies who finally force him to go.