Many seasoned diplomats will tell you that the answer to Zimbabwe lies in South Africa. They are certainly right. Sadly, South African diplomacy - the softly, softly approach - has been an abject failure. Arguably, this was because many of the ANC old school could not stomach the idea that a party of African national liberation would one day be turfed out of office by popular acclaim. Despite his worst excesses, they never really wanted to see Mugabe gone. Perhaps now that the Zimbabwean crisis has been exported to them in vast numbers of refugees, they may have a change of heart and choose a policy that can actually deliver results; cutting off electricity supplies.
The figures may be old, but a full 25% of Zimbabwe's electricity in 2005 came from outside the country which is chronically undersupplied anyway. Most of these imports stem from their much bigger southern neighbour as well as from Mozambique. And as the Zimbabwean dollar reaches new lows and the existing power infrastructure rots away thanks to vandalism and copper theft, I suspect that percentage is even higher today.
This idea of freezing electricity exports into Zimbabwe has been muted for some time, most recently again by our own Foreign Office. It will still be South Africa though that has to make this decision and it shouldn't be that hard - I doubt the Zimbabwean regime even pays the market rate for it, if at all.
That's why all international diplomatic pressure should now come to bear on South Africa to enact this policy and bring an end to this long-running tragedy.
