The ANC seems to want President Thabo Mbeki to continue his mediation in Zimbabwe - and perhaps other African conflicts - after his resignation.
This seems to make sense as he has devoted a great deal of his presidency to continental peace-making.
There are many precedents for former presidents to become peace mediators; Nelson Mandela mediated in Burundi.
But Zimbabwean political analyst Takura Zhangazha says if Mbeki does continue his Zimbabwe mediation, he would be weakened by the lack of authority of the presidency.
At first glance that also sounds plausible. But, on closer inspection, what emerges as perhaps the greatest flaw in Mbeki's peace-making efforts is that he did NOT really use the authority of his position in these endeavours.
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Except perhaps in the wrong way. In the case of Zimbabwe, Mbeki's challenge - to most observers - seemed to remove his dead hand from the power control. But Mbeki, ever the dissident thinker, seemed instead to construe his role as putting the brakes on change. He humoured, cajoled, flattered and sometimes perhaps tried to bribe President Robert Mugabe to loosen the reigns of power.
Never, it seems, did Mbeki apply pressure or invoke the relatively gigantic state he commanded to put the squeeze on Mugabe, as John Vorster had put the squeeze on Ian Smith.
And so - as far as could be discerned in a very opaque negotiating processes - Mugabe mostly just accepted the flattery and did what he wanted to do anyway.
The closest Mbeki came to utilising the considerable state power at his disposal appeared to be when he offered Mugabe R1-billion to kickstart the Zimbabwean economy, on condition Mugabe introduced sensible political and economic policies. Mugabe declined and went elsewhere for the money.
Mbeki's people argued that he had no real choice; that Mugabe was in power and only persuasion could make him surrender any of it.
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