Zimbabwe and Zambia are trying to fix strained diplomatic relations behind the scenes ahead of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) summit in Harare to avoid a showdown in front of regional leaders which might have far-reaching consequences for sub-regional stability.
Informed diplomatic sources say President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his Zambian counterpart Hakainde Hichilema are using various channels of diplomatic engagement to resolve their dispute emanating from last year’s flawed and disputed elections in Zimbabwe.
Former Zambian Vice President Enock Kevin Kavindele is the key mediator between the two leaders and their countries.
Kavindele, a prominent Zambian businessperson and former minister, was in Harare on Tuesday for a meeting with Mnangagwa at State House to lobby Zimbabwe’s support for a Zambian candidate to become African Development Bank (AfDB) president next year, and resolve the diplomatic spat.
Zambia’s candidate Dr Samuel Munzele Maimbo is contesting for the AfDB top post in next year’s election and needs solid regional support to win.
More than five candidates from different African countries are running for the position.
Kavindele’s role is critical and he got off to a good start in a solid friendly and diplomatic engagement.
After meeting Mnangagwa, Kavindele told state media journalists:
“Firstly, I have come to see my brother and secondly to wish him and the people of Zimbabwe the best when they take over the chairmanship of SADC and to seek my elder brother’s support and that of Zimbabweans. We have a candidate we are trying to sell to the region who wants to become a president of the African Development Bank. This man works at the World Bank as the vice president there, but he wants now to come and be in Africa with us. So we say well, we will go to a senior man (President Mnangagwa) across the Zambezi and tell him, so we haven’t gone anywhere else at all.”
“We are here to seek support. President Mnangagwa has assured us of his support for our candidate.”
Mnangagwa, who grew up in Zambia, and Kavindele are long-time friends, having worked together in the United National Independence Party (Unip) under founding leader Kenneth Kaunda as youths during Zimbabwe’s early liberation struggle days.
Mnangagwa, who is to all intents and purposes also Zambian, knows many old Zambian politicians and power brokers. Confirming this with reference to Kavindele, Mnangagwa said:
“We came from far together in the United National Independence Party (Unip) and in Zambia with the former Zambian Vice President Kavindele.
“I am seeing my brother here. I assured them our full support for their candidate.”
Kavindele served in various positions within the Zambian government from 1986 to 2006.
These included Minister of Health; Minister of Science, Technology and Vocational Training; Minister of Commerce Trade and Industry and later Vice-President.
Besides, Kavindele is also married to a Zimbabwean, making him more suitable to mediate in the protracted dispute centering on Zimbabwe’s flawed and disputed elections last year in August and Hichilema’s links with the opposition CCC then led by Nelson Chamisa.
To make matters worse, Mnangagwa is close to Hichilema’s main political rival, former Zambian president Edgar Lungu, who was defeated in the August 2021 presidential election, but wants to bounce back – with Harare’s backing – in 2026.
Hichilema, as chairperson of the Sadc troika of the organ on politics, defence and security, dispatched former Zambian Vice President Nevers Mumba as head of the regional body’s election observer mission to Zimbabwe.
Hichilema also sent Kavindele to observe elections in Eswatini.
The Zimbabwe observer mission came up with a report which found the elections did not comply with the country’s constitution and laws, as well as the Sadc principles and guidelines governing democratic elections.
This sparked a fierce public row between Zimbabwean and Zambian officials, straining relations.
Hichilema insisted on upholding the report which was adopted in two post-election crucial meetings, including an extraordinary Sadc summit, in Zambia and Angola.
The report remains on the table and Mnangagwa is seeking to revise or reverse it during the Sadc Harare summit.
Mnangagwa has invested a lot in the summit in diplomatic terms and in its optics by upgrading roads, conference facilities, Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, hotels and building villas to impress his guests from whom he badly needs support to sanitise his re-election fiasco.
The rapprochement is meant to also ensure Hichilema attends the Sadc summit for legitimacy.
Although Mnangagwa and Hichilema met in Livingstone, Zambia, on 31 May for the 2024 Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area heads of state and government summit, Hichilema did not attend the Tripartite Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia Transfrontier Conservation Area summit in Harare on 18 July.
Hichilema was represented by Zambian Minister of Tourism Rodney Sikumba. Before the current diplomatic engagement, relations between Zimbabwe and Zambia, which have close historical ties as they were once one country during the 1953-63 Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, plunged to their lowest ebb.
This followed Mnangagwa’s remarks to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on 5 June that Zambia now has close ties with the United States and that was isolating Zimbabwe in the region.
Mnangagwa suggested that Zambian was now a satellite state for America, referencing its links with the US Africa Command military which has an office in Lusaka as destabilising.
Although Zimbabwean claims the US has a base in Zambia, the Americans have dismissed this as a lie. Mnangagwa’s remarks angered Zambians, with Foreign minister Mulambo Haimbe describing his statements as an “unwarranted attack on Zambian sovereignty”.
Zambia said it had engaged Sadc and African Union to resolve the problem.
Mnangagwa had raised the issue, triggered by the disputed elections, in a bid to draw in Putin on his side and capitalise on the current geopolitical contestation between Washington and Moscow for his own political benefit.
However, the American dismissed the Africom story as untrue during an African Chiefs of Defence Conference in Gaborone, Botswana. Ironically, Africom has close relations with Botswana led by President Mokgweetsi Masisi, a Mnangagwa ally.
Africom has donated a military cargo plane to Botswana and they will be doing joint military exercises soon just across the western border.
Kavindele has a major task to ensure that the situation does not escalate and deteriorate into a conflict in Africa’s sub-regional bastion of stability.
