Zimbabwe has received two recent votes of tentative coinfidence in recent days.
One comes from Morgan Tsvangirai, who continues to insist that the country’s unity government is on the right path. Tsvangirai has continued to be a booster for the new dispensation and clearly recognizes that however uncomfortable and imperfect the alliance between himself and his MDC and Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF, Zimbabweans need that strange partnership to succeed. It may not be ideal, and the alliance may not hold forever, but Tsvangirai deserves to be taken seriously even if the rest of the world should feel free to embrace the old Cold War standard of trust, but verify.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is in the business of verifying. And it too gives Zimbabwe a tepid but vaguely optimistic assessment. Tsvangirai’s optimism is perhaps to be expected. The IMF is another matter. While it still harbors a great deal of concern about Zimbabwe’s future prospects, it also is in a position to help try to prevent its most apocalyptic scenarios from coming to pass.