11:48 26Mar2008 ANALYSIS-Zimbabwe's neighbours hope poll brings change
By Phumza Macanda
JOHANNESBURG, March 26 (Reuters) - Whatever public words of support Zimbabwe's government wins from its neighbours, they will be hoping this week's election puts southern Africa's trouble maker on a path to change.
Zimbabwe is holding back regional growth and economic integration, spilling millions of economic migrants over its borders, straining regional diplomacy and making the whole neighbourhood look bad for failing to end the crisis.
Once one of the region's most dynamic economies, President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe has gone from helping drive the agenda at the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to consistently topping the agenda as the problem child.
"SADC countries have had to spend a lot of energy doing two things: finding a solution to the Zimbabwe situation and trying to anticipate the impact of the meltdown on themselves," said Siphamandla Zondi, programme director at the Institute for Global Dialogue.
"That is the energy that should have been used to build and to create things we need to go forward," Zondi said.
Mugabe faces the toughest challenge to his 28 years in power because of the economic cataclysm and ruling party defections, but opposition divisions and the hold he has over the state apparatus mean he is still hard to beat.
While the region certainly does not want a result that pushes Zimbabwe to violence -- Mugabe has warned rivals against Kenya-style protests if they dispute the outcome -- nobody wants a continuation of the current decline either.
If Mugabe's challengers, ex-ally Simba Makoni and long- term rival Morgan Tsvangirai, make serious inroads against the ruling ZANU-PF party, it could open the way for policy reform and help end the Mugabe era even if he wins, Zondi said.
REFORM?
"It might propel the ruling ZANU-PF towards some form of internal renewal and that could mean allowing Mugabe to retire and inject new blood," he said, suggesting the party might then be ready to listen to advice from the region and further afield.
"People are not even focused on democracy any more... All they want is normality," he said.
Southern African countries have generally taken a soft approach to Mugabe, a hero of the struggle for independence in Africa. The quiet diplomacy has contrasted with Western demands for rapid reform, but it has also delivered limited results.
Zimbabwe's economic woes have left shelves empty at home, the currency all but worthless and inflation at around 100,000 percent - the world's highest.
Farms and industry that once exported to neighbouring countries, helping drive their own growth, are ruined. Mugabe's critics in particular blame his policy of seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks.
"For smaller countries that relied heavily on Zimbabwe imports, taking Zimbabwe out of the food picture has been devastating," said Tony Twine, economist at Econometrix.
Sub-Saharan Africa's gross domestic product grew almost 90 percent between 1997 and 2007 in purchasing power parity terms, according to IMF estimates. Zimbabwe's shrank over 30 percent.
The economic crisis has sent a flood of Zimbabweans abroad - many illegally. Some 3.5 million people are estimated to have fled the country, most of them to South Africa. Many have also gone to Botswana.
BURDEN
These economic refugees are placing added pressure on social and economic infrastructure in those countries and are increasing xenophobic tensions, said Chris Maroleng, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies.
"In South Africa, there has been an increase of sporadic violence in communities where you find high numbers of mainly illegal immigrants. Locals look at them as taking their jobs," he said.
The immigrants have also been blamed for the high levels of violent crime in South Africa, although Maroleng said there was no evidence Zimbabweans were disproportionately involved.
Analysts say Zimbabwe's crisis has also put issues such as improving intra-regional trade and infrastructure on the back seat even though in some ways the region remains Mugabe's biggest defender to the rest of the world.
The SADC electoral observer mission is the main body monitoring the ballot in the absence of Western observers - Zimbabwe banned election monitors from any countries that are critical of Mugabe.
The regional observers have been at pains to say they see the electoral process as fair so far despite opposition complaints and concerns raised by human rights groups, the European Union and former colonial power Britain.
But Zimbabwe's crisis is also making relations within the region more difficult, with countries such as Botswana being heavily critical.
The lack of clear success for the diplomatic strategy championed by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki over Zimbabwe has been a blow to his credibility and to all those in the region who have followed his lead.
(Editing by Marius Bosch and Matthew Tostevin)
Refugees, mainly from Zimbabwe and Somalia, demonstrate outside the parliament in Cape Town March 20, 2008. Many refugees fleeing economic hardship and conflict on the African continent face bureaucratic obstacles and ...
