REALPOLITIK: Trevor Royle

YOU can knock any amount of noughts off a nation's banknotes, but readjusting the figures won't get rid of the basic problem. When Zimbabwe's head banking honcho Gideon Gono announced that every 10 billion zimdollar note would be revalued at one zimdollar, he was acting with the best of intentions. Hyper-inflation has made a nonsense of the nation's economy and it was patently absurd to print more supplies of the new $100 billion banknotes now that they can be revalued at 10 zimdollars and everyone can have lighter wallets.

It's not a new idea and it can only offer a sticking plaster to a gaping wound. Weimar Germany tried the same ploy when its economy spun out of control in the 1920s but it hardly helped matters and left a situation which the Nazis were later to exploit. With inflation running at 2.2 million per cent in Zimbabwe it's unlikely if Gono's intervention will do very much better. What is needed is an immediate political solution to the impasse which has bedevilled the country since the elections earlier this year.

Tomorrow will see the first deadline in the power-sharing talks between President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) but even if it comes and goes, as well it might, hopes are still reasonably high that some kind of accommodation can be found. In the past any hint of stalling would have sent the talks into freefall, but now there seems to be a new willingness to compromise. It's not impossible that the vexed question of leadership roles will finally be solved, thus opening the door to a workable power-sharing arrangement.

That much became clear last week when Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade acted as an intermediary, thereby taking the talks beyond the southern African nexus which has largely been run by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Asked if the west African leader's intervention was a snub to the main mediator, Tsvangirai responded with a quick denial, adding that it was simply a case of the more the merrier. I don't think he was being diplomatic or merely offering a soundbite; he was just being realistic.

For the first time in many a long year there's a real possibility that an African solution will be found to this hitherto intractable African problem. All along that has been the key. While it is true to say that Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy" has been canny to the point of inaudibility, he should be applauded for his persistence in encouraging Mugabe and Tsvangirai to put their names to the accord that led to this weekend's final push. The silence from the West has also been helpful.

As ever in dealing with post- colonial problems, it is useful to try to see the issue from the other side's point of view. Mugabe might over-egg the pudding when he blames all his country's woes on what went wrong during the Rhodesian period, but there are still lingering suspicions that Britain has to accept some of the blame for what happened in 1980 when Zimbabwe came into being.

Not only did Britain back the wrong horse in Mugabe, but the land issue was never resolved satisfactorily. The first blunder led indirectly to the demise of Mugabe's rival, Joshua Nkomo, and then to the massacre of thousands of his supporters in Matabeleland; the second paved the way for the illegal land grabs of the past few years. Throughout that period Western critics argued that as the white-owned farms generated most of the country's income they should be protected, but it was not the whole story. Yes, the white farmers were excellent at working the land and it's undoubtedly true that they helped make Zimbabwe southern Africa's breadbasket, but there is no gainsaying that the wealth came at a cost to social cohesion.

Under the terms of the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, legislation was enacted to allow land to be sold on the "willing seller, willing buyer" principle, but the funds were insufficient and most land reform went by the board. There was much dragging of feet, with the result that Mugabe used land as a weapon and Zimbabwe quickly went to hell on a handcart. Farms that were once productive fell into disuse as land passed into the hands of Mugabe's cronies, who in turn became just another elite.

Complaints from the West were dismissed as post-colonial rants and even those Zimbabweans who did not like Mugabe bridled when they heard him being attacked. In the next few days we'll know if he is capable of changing his tune and working with Tsvangirai. Threatening sanctions hasn't helped matters but simply made things worse.

If there is any hint of a workable solution, the best thing would be for London and Washington to put their weight behind it. It will be a darned sight better than removing another fistful of zeroes.