Karima Brown
3 April 2007
Johannesburg — PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki says the key to resolving the problems in Zimbabwe is the establishment of conditions in which free and fair elections can be held.
His mandate as a mediator in the Zimbabwean crisis was renewed by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) emergency summit last week.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times newspaper, Mbeki said SA would not be in favour of "regime change" as a means of resolving Zimbabwe's political woes, as has been suggested by some western powers.
"We would not ever support any proposition about regime change. So that is not an option for us, whatever other people might think in the rest of the world," he said.
Mbeki was at pains to defend SA's quiet diplomacy approach, saying it had not changed despite him coming under pressure to act more forcefully against the Mugabe regime. Mbeki poured cold water on calls for sanctions or switching off the electricity to SA's northern neighbour, saying, "we don't have a big stick".
He said SA had no intention of embarking on a course of action that government believed would only increase the difficulties for ordinary Zimbabweans.
Mbeki told the newspaper he was confident that Mugabe would step down willingly, despite the clampdown on political opposition over the past few years.
"I think so. Yes, sure. You see President Mugabe and the leadership of Zanu (PF) believe they are running a democratic country. That's why you have an elected opposition, that's why it's possible for the opposition to run municipal government (in Harare and Bulawayo).
"You might question whether these elections are genuinely free and fair… but we have to get to the Zimbabweans so we do have elections that are genuinely free and fair," he said.
Mbeki's comments come as the situation in Zimbabwe spirals out of control, and follows the outcome of a tough meeting of SADC leaders where beleaguered President Robert Mugabe was told privately to reform or retire. It is understood that, following the summit, the SADC is now putting together an exit package for Mugabe underwritten by western countries.
Sources close to the summit say the US and UK have drafted a five-point plan, including an economic rescue package, as part of the way forward to complement the SADC initiative. The significance of the SADC outcome is that Mbeki now enjoys the full support of his peers in the region and can bring their authority to bear on Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) — a fact MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai was well aware of during his visit to SA yesterday. The MDC leader, who in the past questioned Mbeki's impartiality as a mediator, yesterday gave Mbeki the thumbs up, promising to co-operate in any initiative to resolve the political impasse.
Mbeki stuck to his guns on crime in the interview, insisting that racism continued to cloud perceptions over escalating crime.
"The people who built the apartheid system say we did all of this to try and build a wall around ourselves because here we are sitting in this continent surrounded by black hordes and we don't know what they are going to do, so we needed to protect ourselves whether it is prohibiting sexual relations between black and white, delineating residential areas, saying this is black and this is white.
"It all had to do with a fear that one day we would be swamped, that they would just come and devour us. It would seem to me that some of the communication you get around crime is driven still by this notion of fear."
On the divisive issue of the ANC's succession battle Mbeki played his cards close to his chest. "At imbizos no one ever says who will be the next president of the ANC. They say, 'president, our children are matriculating from school, they are sitting at home because there is no money to go to university and there are no jobs, so do something'. We have to respond and the ANC has to respond," he said.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 Business Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
