Revealed: Details of Zimbabwe’s new power-sharing agreement

Arthur Mkambara’s party will have three ministers and four deputies.

Will the experiment work? What is clear is that the networks around Mugabe have accepted the deal only reluctantly.

“What you read from groups such as JOC and the vice president Mr Joseph Misika is shallow acquiescence,” said a source who has been following the negotiations closely.

If the coalition experience in Kenya is anything to go by, then the coming months will be dominated by attempts by Mugabe’s inner circle and bodies such as JOC to constantly negate or evade the conditions attached to the agreement.

A host of cronies, and key patrons of the Zanu-PF party, when confronted with the prospect of losing privileged access to subsidised credit, foreign-exchange allocations, import licences, cheap utilities and public-sector jobs, will begin to fight back.

In Kenya, this phenomenon explains the constant bickering for public positions.

The controversy over the replacement of the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, Mrs Jacinta Mwatela, and the saga around the Grand Regency Hotel, are but reflections of the constant power play between interests within the coalition.

From the very beginning, the coalition in Kenya was rocked by the issue of protocol on who between the Prime Minister and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka occupies a higher rank in the pecking order.

The issue has refused to die. Lately, there has been talk of a grand coalition policy document to instill the values of the coalition within the government.

Disagreements on how to deal with party youths arrested at the height of the spate of violence that hit the country in the wake of the disputed elections have been yet another cause of friction within the coalition.

Lately, the main problem has been political instability within the main parties of the ruling coalition.

With President Kibaki already out of contention for the 2012 elections, his key allies are already angling to replace him. Loyalty to parties is going out of fashion as key players within the coalition start looking around for allies across their parties.

Within the ODM, a key ethnic constituency has been grumbling about sharing of Cabinet appointments and the eviction of squatters from one of East Africa’s main water towers — the Mau forest.

Consequently, the leaders of the coalition are now proposing to establish a grand coalition co-ordination board of 10 members, out of which eight will comprise ministers — four from each of the coalition partners — with the responsibility of resolving disputes.

In the case of Zimbabwe, it is clear that what has been negotiated is a transitional arrangement. The Kenya arrangement was a five-year power-sharing deal.