Activists often say that the world is not paying enough attention to Sudan’s Darfur crisis. But could the opposite be true — that Darfur is actually getting too much attention, from too many organisations, all at the same time?

A rough count shows at least 10 international and local initiatives searching for a solution to the region’s festering conflict. Many of them are at least nominally coordinated by the United Nation and the African Union. But with so many parallel programmes in play, the opportunities for duplication, competition and confusion are legion.

Top of the bill on the international stage is the double act between the United Nations and the African Union. Their joint Darfur mediator — Burkina Faso’s low-profile former security minister Djibril Bassole — spends much of his time shuttling between capitals, holding closed-session discussions with rebels, regional powers, Darfuri intellectuals and civilian groups.

The most high-profile initiative is a project launched at the Arab League for peace talks between Sudan’s government and rebels hosted in Qatar. Those talks, currently stalled, are hosted “in coordination” with Bassole but their have their own separate identity — Qatar has made its own statements and has held its own meetings with rebels.

During one crowded fortnight in August, both Libya and the United States held separate meetings with different sets of rebel splinter groups, urging them to reunite ahead of talks, with mixed results.

The Obama administration has since formalised its approach to Darfur with a new Sudan policy — although it did not go into details on which carrots and sticks its Sudan envoy Scott Gration would be able to offer Khartoum and Darfur’s rebels.

Egypt has held and hosted meetings with Darfur rebels and other major players. Russia, which says it wants to rebuild its influence in Africa, has appointed a Sudan envoy, and held a two-day symposium on Darfur earlier this month. China also has a Sudan envoy but has so far, mercifully, held back from organising its own conferences.

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki led a panel of African dignitaries around Darfur and produced a report packed with recommendations for the region. A group of veteran politicians formed by Nelson Mandela called The Elders have kept a watching brief in Darfur since their first visit there in 2007 and have continued to release statements and reports.

Inside Sudan, the Khartoum regime has trumpeted its Sudan People’s Initiative, a mass congress of political parties, civil society groups (but no rebels) that met in November 2008 to recommend a set of solutions to the crisis.

The south’s dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) joined forces with opposition parties in September to release a Juba Declaration - a blueprint to solve Sudan’s ills including its own Darfur plan.

And that isn’t even counting the various Darfur peace plans and campaigns launched by mainly U.S.-based activists from Save Darfur and other coalitions - or the push for prosecutions by the International Criminal Court.

Cynics might say Khartoum and some of its key negotiating partners have an interest in encouraging the multiplication of Darfur’s peace efforts.

Each new initiative creates another set of meetings, another set of processes, another collection of excuses to delay making the hard decisions that will end the conflict.

Regional powers may also be competing for influence in Sudan, an oil producer and Africa’s largest country. “There has been a lack of a single clear strategy on Darfur so everyone is poking their nose in, trying to gain influence in Sudan,” said Al-Tahir al-Feki, a senior official with Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels.

Only one thing is clear. When the Darfur crisis is finally resolved and the Nobel Committee comes to hand out its peace prize to the organisations responsible for sealing the deal, there could be a crowded podium.

An expectant crowd packed the room on the 11th floor of London’s City Hall, which has a spectacular view over Tower Bridge, for the announcement of the winner of this year’s $5 million Ibrahim prize for achievement in African leadership.

The prize committee, including Mary Robinson, former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, and Salim Ahmed Salim, one-time secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity, files in.

A hush falls over the room as former Botswana President Ketumile Masire goes to the podium to read the prize committee’s statement. And the winner is … nobody!

Although they had considered some “credible candidates”, Masire said the committee could not select a winner for the prize which rewards former African leaders who set examples of democratic government.

Despite repeated questioning from journalists, neither Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese-born telecommunications magnate who funded the world’s richest individual award, nor any member of the prize committee would say why they had not awarded the prize for the first time in its three years of existence.

Unless the committee was so deeply divided it could not choose between several equally deserving candidates, which seems unlikely, the only possible explanation appears to be that none of the 11 or so African leaders who stepped down between 2006 and 2008 met the standard to win the Ibrahim prize.

Although Ibrahim denied it, that appears to be a snub to former presidents such as South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, Sierra Leone’s Ahmed Tejan Kabbah and Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, who all stepped down between 2006 and 2008 and therefore were eligible for the award.

Africa has well-documented problems with corruption. Six of the bottom 10 nations in watchdog Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions index were in Africa. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has long had to struggle with endemic corruption, shambolic infrastructure and weak regulation. Tanzania’s anti-graft agency is set to bring two or three big cases to court soon as part of a drive against corruption that has already claimed several senior officials. A minister in Sierra Leone said in May he was running one of the most corrupt government departments in the country.

Despite the bad headlines, there have been glimmers of progress. Improvements in governance are often cited among reasons why the investment climate in Africa has been getting better.

The 2008 index of African Governance, released by Ibrahim’s own foundation, said governance had improved in almost two thirds of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In this year’s survey, Mauritius ranked first in Africa for governance, followed by Cape Verde and Seychelles.

Former World Bank governance head Daniel Kaufmann said recently that the global financial crisis would widen the gulf between countries in governance and corruption, with some states hastening reforms but others using economic distress to justify doing nothing. In Africa, he predicted a growing divide between troubled Kenya and countries like Ghana, Rwanda and Liberia, which were improving.

But are rich countries in Europe and North America in any position to preach to Africa on corruption or governance?

Britain, for example, has been riveted for months by tales of how its politicians spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money cleaning their swimming pools or repairing their tennis courts. In 2006, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office dropped an investigation of allegations of bribery of Saudi Arabia officials in an arms deal. Then-Prime Minister Tony Blair said the probe threatened national security.

Nevertheless, by refusing to say why they decided not to award the prize this year, the Ibrahim Foundation has squandered a great opportunity to highlight problems of poor governance in Africa. By being open and stating clearly that African leaders had fallen short of the standard required to win the prize, the committee could have focused attention on the problem of poor governance and started a debate about what to do about it.

Do you agree with the decision not to award the prize?

Do all African leaders who stepped down in the last three years fall short of the standard? Who do you think should have won it?

Is it a good idea to reward a leader with $5 million for doing the job they were expected to do?

William Gumede

South Africa’s national elections last week have reshaped the contours of the country’s political landscape. It has almost certainly killed off the careers of many opposition leaders who have become institutions and their parties with them. It virtually obliterated the peer parties of the ANC, with their roots as liberation movements, such as the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and the Azanian Peoples’ Organisation (Azapo). It is clear the electorate believes these parties are irrelevant, outdated and under poor leadership. The Inkatha Freedom Party, whose founder, Mangosuthu Buthelezi also professed that it has its origins in liberation movement politics has also been brought down to size.

 The IFP has dominated the KwaZulu Natal province since the 1960s, but embarrassingly lost out to the ANC now. ANC President Jacob Zuma’s overt appeal to Zulu speakers in the province who have supported the IFP in the past, by arguing that is better to support him (Zuma) for the presidency, and have a Zulu-speaker in the presidency, has evidently worked. Many IFP supporters have voted for Zuma merely on the basis of ethnic affinity, rather than his record in government.

 But this strategy also run the risks of increasing ethnic divisions, with some Zuma supporters already whispering for the ‘Xhosa-Nostra’ to be purged from government. This is a reference to individuals who were allies of former President Thabo Mbeki, are Xhosa speakers or who are from the Eastern Cape province from where Mbeki and former President Nelson Mandela hail.

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William Gumede is the author of “The Democracy Gap: Africa’s Wasted Years” and ”Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC”.

South Africa votes on 22 April with not only its globally admired efforts to build democracy in tatters, but against the backdrop of many other promising attempts to build viable democracies across Africa now backsliding.

Military coups, such as the recent one in Madasgascar, assumed to be part of Africa’s terrible past, appear now to again have become a regular occurrence. The election earlier this year of Muammar Gadaffi - who himself came to power by military coup in Libya - as leader of the African Union, by his peers, is symbolic of the continental regression.

When South Africa became democratic in 1994 with Nelson Mandela at the head, it was hoped that the new democracy at the southern tip of Africa would provide a powerful home-grown impetus for expanding democracy across the continent.

And it initially looked promising, with Mandela’s exemplary moral leadership; and his successor Thabo Mbeki’s initial efforts to champion an African economic, social and democratic ‘renaissance’.

However, soon the African curse struck: Mbeki’s moving rhetoric did not match actual day-to-day practice. While preaching democracy, Mbeki clamped down on internal dissent, packed public watchdogs with uncritical loyalists, and looked the other way when allies were shown to be corrupt or incompetent.

It is inconceivable that the ruling African National Congress, with Jacob Zuma at the helm, will not win South Africa’s national elections. Formidable charges of corruption were dropped against Zuma after the acting head of the national prosecuting authority emphasised that the case against the incoming president was solid, but that possible political interference in the timing of whether to press charges against Zuma made the authority reluctant to press ahead.

Most African independence and liberation movements have failed on three levels in government: leadership, building viable democracies and prudently managing their economies.

Some leaders come to power by violent means and rule through violence. Some start off proclaiming themselves democrats, but once in power turn into autocrats. Some leaders prefer to die in office, as the case of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

Lack of democracy and the lack of viable alternatives – either because they are brutally silenced or just irrelevant – are among the reasons why oppressive regimes are ousted in coups.

Yet in the still rare cases where opposition parties remove oppressive ruling parties through the ballot box, they often behave no better in power themselves.

Democracy is invariably seen by most of the continent’s leaders and ruling parties in the most minimalistic way – and meaning only holding the occasional election.

Another problem is that very few post-independence African ruling governments have managed to spread wealth evenly. Invariably the benefits go to the old colonial elite and the new post-colonial ones made up of prominent struggle figures and the liberation or independence ‘aristocracies’. The overwhelming majority remain as poor as before.

It is not that there are no quality leaders in ruling African political movements, it is that the patronage system of these movements is so entrenched that serious new contenders outside these networks cannot break through.

Ruling political movements are often the problem themselves: parties run tyrannically are unlikely to be able to build democratic societies. What makes successful independence or liberation movements, trying to overthrow corrupt colonial administrations, often make for poor governments.

Furthermore, liberation and independence movements often mimic the autocratic governments they fight.

Open elections for the top leadership are discouraged, leadership centralised and opposition is often discouraged.

Doctrinaire positions on economics, whether inspired by the West, the East or romantic notions of past African management styles, makes for woolly economics once in power.

African voters often vote for parties and leaders based on their past struggle record, rather than on actual performance in government. Yet, it is their performance in government that will make a difference in ordinary voters’ lives.

Most African leaders, even the out-and-out dictators, claim to be ruling on behalf of the people. Yet, they experience daily life in a way that is outrageously different to that of the average poor supporter: when ordinary South Africans are besieged by crime, Jacob Zuma spends more in a month on personal security than many might earn in years.

South Africa goes into the election with a number of parties, but in Africa, it is not only whether there is an opposition party that is crucial, but the kind of opposition party.

Sadly, in most African countries opposition parties are hardly relevant.

In South Africa, enthusiasm for the Congress of the People, a splinter from the ANC, has abated, following poor policies, the undemocratic election of its leaders and poor visibility.

The global financial crisis is likely to make daily life even more difficult for ordinary people not only in South Africa, but across Africa.

Such worsening conditions may prove the catalyst for restless long-suffering ordinary Africans to rebel against failing governments.

However, it may also provide unscrupulous, but failing leaders, the excuse to reverse democratic reforms, blaming scapegoats for their own inadequacies, bowing under the pressure from their allies to extend corrupt patronage, or to embark on irresponsible economic populist measures, to bolster their own power.

Most African parties and leaders often still mostly blame outside and internal forces for failures, which block the necessary self-examination.

Yet, unless there is thorough introspection by African political movements themselves, to learn from past failures, viable democracy will remain a distant dream for the continent’s long-suffering ordinary citizens.

A court ruling that effectively reinstates corruption charges against African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma could hardly have come at a worse moment for him and the party that has dominated South Africa since the end of apartheid.

There appears little doubt that Zuma will be the party’s presidential candidate ahead of elections expected around April, but the ANC now faces its toughest electoral test yet with hefty graft charges hanging over its man.

Prosecutors say the ruling means Zuma remains charged with corruption, fraud and money laundering. This might severely hurt his image, internationally and at home, during a battle to fend off a challenge from the new party of ANC dissidents called COPE. The ANC is still expected to win, but maybe without such a sweeping parliamentary majority to be able to shape laws as it wishes.

The news brought renewed concerns of political instability and the rand fell to a one-month low.

Zuma’s lawyers may appeal to the Constitutional Court, the highest in the country, which will drag out the case further. Zuma has said before he will only step down as president if found guilty of the corruption and fraud charges.

Prosecutors and Zuma may try to secure a deal that will end the long-running saga over charges that Zuma’s supporters see as politically motivated.

A settlement may suit Zuma if it looks as though he will face new charges and a trial that will either coincide with the election, or punctuate the first years of his presidency.

The appeals court ruling is good news for former President Thabo Mbeki, helping to repair his image after being ousted by the ANC in September, following the high court judgement that suggested he interfered to secure charges against Zuma. He cannot be expected to return to government, however.

What should Zuma and the ANC do next? Even if no charges are brought by then, would the case be likely to have an impact on the elections? Would COPE stand to benefit?

Given that the leaders of the world’s most firmly capitalist countries are splashing around unprecedented billions to nationalise banks, prop up industry and try to get economies moving, it might seem churlish for anyone to question South Africa’s ruling ANC for planning to spend a bit more freely.

This weekend, the African National Congress set out its election manifesto priorities of creating jobs and improving education and health - promises interpreted by many as marking a generally leftward shift under the leadership of president in waiting Jacob Zuma.

But the plan raises the questions of how the spending will be paid for and how dramatic a shift to the left there will be - of major interest to investors as well as South Africans.

“Zuma did not attach a price tag to the manifesto, but ANC leaders privately admit, to allay fears of a tax hike, that it would be too costly to implement,” said this article in the Sunday Independent.

Africa’s biggest economy has grown significantly since the end of apartheid in 1994, although the dynamism had started to falter even before the global financial crisis spread gloom around the world.

South Africa’s poor and its workers had long complained that the benefits were not being shared around fairly and that only those in a new elite were thriving. The leadership under Zuma, widely expected to become president this year, was always going to be under pressure for more social spending from the ANC grassroots and the party’s union and Communist Party allies.

The pressure may have increased further with the emergence of the new COPE party after the ousting of President Thabo Mbeki. Although COPE’s electoral impact is uncertain and it has not yet spelled out its policies clearly, the fact that close allies of Mbeki are behind it has suggested it is likely to align more with the former president’s stance, seen as ‘pro-business’.

Zuma has always been at great pains to spell out to business leaders and foreign investors that there would be no dramatic changes under his rule. Flight of investment could further weaken the rand, mean job losses just at the moment when the ANC wants to create more and force up government borrowing costs.

That could make it even harder to finance populist pledges without resorting to measures that might create even more financial instability.

This article in South Africa’s Times raised questions over the ANC’s plans for the central bank and whether that would damage its standing as a pillar of macroeconomic stability seen as vital for growth.

It is certainly going to be a very tricky time. How substantial do you think any shift to the left is and would it be for the best? If conflicting promises have been made to different interest groups then which are going to be met? Can they all? If not, then what will be the reaction of those who feel disappointed?

(Picture: President of the ruling African National Congress Jacob Zuma dances on stage at his party’s election campaign launch. Reuters)

Is it just me, or is Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe starting to look more confident again? At the start of power sharing talks a few weeks back he appeared distinctly grim when he and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had their historic handshake.

In the past few days he has been much more his old self, lambasting the West at a speech to commemorate the dead in the liberation war, giving a national honour to George Chiweshe, who organised elections that were condemned by much of the world, and generally upbeat during three days of talks that in the end delivered no result.

Exactly what’s going on behind the closed doors is hard to fathom.

A top official from Mugabe’s ZANU-PF told Reuters a deal had already been done between Mugabe and Arthur Mutambara, leader of a breakaway opposition faction. “Deal sealed” read the headline from the state-owned Herald. Mutambara has come out to say that no such deal has been signed but tellingly noted that “should talks fail” any party was entitled to enter bilateral negotiations.

What a deal with Mutambara might give Mugabe is the parliamentary majority that ZANU-PF lost in the elections. What it is very unlikely to give him is hope of resolving the crisis that is destroying Zimbabwe or of persuading the rest of the world that change is underway.

Tsvangirai has been fairly quiet about the negotiations, but today came out to reaffirm his commitment as long as they respect the results of the March 29 round of elections - in which Mugabe and ZANU-PF were beaten.

Allan Little of the BBC compared the talks now to the 1980s, when Mugabe managed to neutralise rival Joshua Nkomo through a power-sharing deal.

Even if Tsvangirai has strong powers in a new government, he would be up against a wily political player in Mugabe who would lose no opportunity to gain advantage.

If he enters a government with little leverage, it could put big questions over his political career and the fate of his Movement for Democratic Change.

No combination appears guaranteed to alleviate Zimbabwe’s misery.

Is Mugabe going to win out in the end or Tsvangirai? What will it mean for Zimbabwe and for the continent? What do you think?

Keith Gottschalk, The University of the Western Cape

Jacob Zuma’s legal team has already proved, year after year that, if you have a bottomless pocket such as taxpayers, you can protract litigation, U.S.-style for the better part of a decade.

    The Presidency currently has a line item budget of 10 million rand per year for Zuma’s legal expenses. By South African standards, this is a record. It will certainly enable his legal team to appeal every point of procedure, then if necessary the verdict, and sentence. Each appeal starts with a delay of six or nine months on the court rolls, repeated as it winds it way upwards through a full bench of the High Court, followed by the Supreme Court of Appeal, followed by the Constitutional Court.

    Sooner or later Zuma’s lawyers will also discover that above the highest court in South Africa lies the new Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal, based in Windhoek, already resorted to by Zimbabwean white ranchers.

    In short, it’s unimaginable that Zuma’s trial will have concluded by election day in 2009. The last appeal might well stretch even beyond a one-term Zuma presidency, which would end in 2014.

      There are several analogies in other western-style governments. U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney shrugged off similar allegations to those against Zuma. Israeli Prime Minister Erhud Olmert was not prosecuted for illegally receiving money, but has announced his early retirement.

    Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faces more serious claims than Zuma - allegations that he bribed judges. Italy’s ruling party reacted by passing a law forbidding the prosecution of a prime minister. Then they retroactively changed corporate accounting law to pre-empt another prosecution. At the same time a top ANC leader smeared South Africa’s judges as “counter-revolutionary”, Berlusconi smeared his judges as “Reds”.

    This reflects badly on Italian democracy, unequal under the law. One law for the rulers and wealthy, and another for the citizens.

 Not even fire-breathing ANC leaders have lowered themselves to the level of Berlusconi’s party, and proposed to change the law to prohibit prosecution of a President, or retroactively neuter the corruption laws. But they have organized massive demonstrations outside every court where Zuma appears. They have hotted up populist rhetoric to the point where words such as “kill” are now routine. These mass rallies and demonstrations by the ANC, COSATU, and SACP ensure that every verdict against Zuma will be de-legitimated in advance as political bias by a judiciary still mostly white.

 Further, the terms of office of almost half the judges of the Constitutional Court will expire soon after President Mbeki’s own term. Should he become President, Jacob Zuma will be in the enviable position of being able, de facto, to select some of the judges before whom he might later appeal.

 In short, should Zuma be found not guilty, the political results would be much rhetorical grandstanding. Should he be found guilty, South Africa’s democracy will be under similar strains to that in Italy or Israel.

 His defence team will in that case no doubt lead in mitigation Zuma’s three decades of service to liberating South Africa, including one decade on Robben Island. Following this, it is indisputable that Zuma played a leading role as negotiator ending civil war in KwaZulu-Natal province during the early 1990s. He then took over from a frail Mandela as facilitator of the Burundi ceasefire talks in the late 1990s. Alongside President Mbeki, Zuma facilitated the Inter-Congo dialogue in 2002 which re-unified the four-way partitioned Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In short, Zuma has indisputably saved tens of thousands of lives in three countries by ending civil wars years earlier than without his efforts. Should Zuma receive a jail sentence, obviously he will be immediately pardoned by his successor as President or Acting President.

Zimbabwe may lose its status as the country with the world’s highest proportion of billionaires after the central bank’s decision to lop 10 zeroes from its dollar.

What it means for the currency is that 10,000,000,000 dollars will become just one - although it will still take 25 of the new dollars to buy a loaf of bread.

What it means for Zimbabweans could be much less.

Having so many zeroes on the notes certainly doesn’t make shopping any easier, but there is little in the shops anyway and what is there costs too much for many to afford.

The decline of the currency’s value has become a stark symbol of the economic collapse of a country that was once prosperous by regional standards, but now suffers shortages of food and fuel and has lost millions of its people as refugees to neighbouring states.

Experts doubt whether the impact of the re-denomination will be any more than cosmetic. Zimbabwe removed three zeroes from the dollar in 2006, but prices actually spiked after that.

Is there any hope of economic recovery without a deal to end the political crisis? And can there be a hope of that given the differences between Zimbabwe’s rivals? Is the optimism of South African President Thabo Mbeki realistic with the clock ticking down to the initial deadline for an agreement?

What do you think?

Can President Robert Mugabe be trusted to implement the resolution of the African Union summit calling for dialogue and a government of national unity to end Zimbabwe’s long-running crisis? According to Mugabe’s camp, he can. “The AU resolution is in conformity to what President Mugabe said at his inauguration, when he said we are prepared to talk in order to resolve our problems,” his Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu told Reuters a day after the AU passed the resolution on July 1.

While opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Demoratic Change (MDC) say they have kept the door open for negotiations, he says conditions are not yet right for talks. The MDC also makes clear its objective is a transitional arrangement leading to fresh elections rather than a unity government.  The crisis could conceivably be stuck on that difference.

The summit followed Mugabe’s controversial re-election in a run-off poll in which he was the sole candidate. Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in the first round but pulled out of the run-off amid violence and intimidation directed at the MDC and blamed on Mugabe’s camp. The AU resolution expressed concern about the violence.

The AU resolution clearly calls for a Government of National Unity (GNU) as opposed to demands by the MDC and Western governments for a Transitional Government. Political analyst Cheryl Hendricks of Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies makes a strong case for transitional government in Zimbabwe given the highly polarised situation in the country.

“We primarily have two polarised parties each asserting their legitimate right to rule without the prospect of settling the dispute amicably through elections in the near future,” Hendricks wrote in a paper posted on the ISS website on July 2. “The prospects of unity, given these conditions, are highly unlikley and a cobbled together GNU will be unstable.”

Here are further points to consider in relation to the AU’s resolution:

•  The resolution upholds the mediation effort of the regional bloc SADC led by South African President Thabo Mbeki. The SADC formally appointed Mbeki to this role in March 2007 but he has been mediating in the Zimbabwe crisis since the country’s  disputed 2002 presidential election. Mbeki has been widely condemned for his policy of quiet diplomacy with Mugabe.
• The resolution calls on the SADC to “establish a mechanism on the ground in order to seize the momentum for a negotiated solution” but it is not entirely clear what form this would take. In the case of the post-election mayhem in Kenya last December and January, the AU brought in former UN chief Kofi Annan to lead a high-powered mediation effort on the spot.
• The AU intervened more robustly in the Indian Ocean state of Comoros when it sent a military force to back the local army to expel renegade former gendarme Mohamed Bacar who seized power in 2001 and clung on after an illegal election last year. 
• The AU has been cool to planned further sanctions by Western governments against Zimbabwe. Many analysts believe Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown, blamed on Mugabe, and the threat of further sanctions are the most potent means to bring down his government.
• Mbeki has openly dismissed a call by the European Union that Tsvangirai should head any transitional government, and has not disguised his dislike for solutions to the Zimbabwe crisis hatched from outside the region.

Given all the above, is the Zimbabwe crisis indeeed back to square one after the AU summit? Or has the summit produced a framework more conducive to negotiations between Mugabe and his opponents?

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