Washington, DC — In a toughly-worded letter published Friday in the African National Congress online journal, ANC Today, South African President Thabo Mbeki blasted whites agitated by the land conflict in neighboring Zimbabwe, accusing them of being driven by race prejudice.
"A visitor from Mars might assume that Zimbabwe is a province of South Africa," wrote Mbeki: And upon discovering that Zimbabwe was an independent state the visitor might wonder, "why some South Africans seemed so convinced that Zimbabwe was affected by some infectious disease that was bound to cross the Limpopo River and infect South Africa," he continued. "The point that our visitor would have missed, never having been exposed to racism, is that both Zimbabwe and South Africa have black African governments."
"It is this that provokes fears among white South Africans about 'contagion' and the 'Zimbabwe factor,'" Mbeki charged.
He was referring to those South Africans "convinced," as he put it, that South Africa's future "depends on what happens in Zimbabwe and what (the Pretoria) government does about Zimbabwe, rather than what the people of Zimbabwe do about their own country."
Western nations and whites inside South Africa have been demanding that Mbeki denounce Zimbabwe's government and "preach a message" that South Africa was different. There have been calls to impose sanctions, said Mbeki. South Africa's white minority has worked itself into "a frenzy of fear."
All of this confirms what he and many Black South Africans have always suspected, wrote Mbeki: "That the negative stereotype of black people in many white minds is firmly implanted in these minds."The price people who think like this are asking, said Mbeki, "is that we prove, relative to Zimbabwe, that we do not conform to the stereotype of black Africans."
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Mbeki, who has pursued discussions with Robert Mugabe, aimed at encouraging his government to reach a peaceful and equitable solution to the conflict over white farmland, says he will continue to follow that path.
Citing a recent meeting between Zimbabwean and South African government ministers in which the land issue and democracy was discussed, Mbeki said he and President Mugabe will meet soon to consider the proposals that resulted. The goal of peace, stability, democracy and social progress is driving such meetings, said Mbeki. He and his ministers "do not have to prove our credentials to anybody."
Whenever the hypothetical visitor from Mars departs South Africa, Mbeki concluded, "she would have come to understand that, in terms of political boundaries, Zimbabwe is not a province of South Africa."
