Johannesburg — South African President Thabo Mbeki is making the first state visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by a South African leader. Mbeki flew into Kinshasa on Tuesday, accompanied by a large delegation of officials and business executives, for the landmark two-day trip.
Mbeki's personal involvement helped to broker an end to the five year civil war in the DRC, which has remained volatile since the rebellion against the late President Mobutu Sese Seko in the 1990s.
For months throughout 2002 and part of 2003, the Pretoria government hosted the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, bringing together under one roof the government of the DRC's President Joseph Kabila, rebel factions and unarmed opposition groups, at the gambling resort of Sun City. Mbeki and his ministers were eventually rewarded with a fragile peace deal and arguably South Africa's first success in mediating in a regional conflict.
Pretoria was also instrumental in brokering peace pacts between Kabila and his counterparts in Rwanda and Uganda, who backed rival rebel factions in Congo. South Africa has achieved some similar diplomatic success trying to restore peace to Burundi, another troubled country in the Great Lakes' region.
But there was a rocky start to Pretoria's peacemaking initiatives in other parts of the continent, after retired President Nelson Mandela first came to power in 1994.
The first taste of diplomatic failure in Africa dates back to 1995, when Mandela angrily called for sanctions against the Nigerian military ruler of the time, General Sani Abacha. Abacha had wilfully ignored Mandela's appeals for clemency, to spare the lives of the Ogoni Rights' activist and author, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Mandela's plea fell on deaf ears and that was the first slap in the face. Saro-Wiwa and his 8 colleagues were hanged in November that year. Shortly afterwards, Nigeria was suspended from the decision-making organs of the Commonwealth and became a virtual rogue state. Abacha was branded an international pariah.
In 1997, South Africa's second serious attempt to help resolve a conflict in Africa - in President Mobutu Sese Seko's Zaire - also ended in failure. The late Laurent Desire Kabila, then Mobutu's sworn enemy and Zaire's much publicised rebel leader, humiliated both an old man and a sick man - Mandela and Mobutu.
In neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville, Kabila kept them both waiting aboard a South African naval vessel called the Outeniqua. The giant ship was an ice-breaker, but Mandela's mediation efforts between Mobutu and Kabila did little to break through the impasse. Less than 2 months later, Kabila's troops marched into Kinshasa. A dying and defeated Mobutu was hounded out of Zaire, his tail between his legs.
A few weeks later, Laurent Kabila was sworn in as president. After his assassination in 2001, Kabila's son Joseph took over as Congo's new leader.
In 1998, South Africa's third Africa policy fiasco was closer to home - across the border in Lesotho. Pretoria stepped in to end a political crisis in the neighbouring mountain kingdom after a disputed and flawed election. South African troops, unused to peacekeeping duties, were ordered in.
The intervention, under the auspices of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), was criticised by some as an "invasion" of Lesotho and a violation of that nation's sovereignty. It was said that more experienced peacekeepers from Botswana helped to save the day in Lesotho. South Africa was left smarting, again under President Mandela's watch, with his deputy Thabo Mbeki hovering in the wings but reported to be directing foreign affairs.
By 1999, South Africa's diplomatic record in Africa was chequered. But Pretoria learned fast and had to start scoring some successes. After Mbeki took over as president from Mandela in the 1999 elections, the relative 'new boy' on the continental block began pushing for African conflict resolution.
Coupled with the launch of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), the centrepiece of Mbeki's vision of an African renaissance, he continued to foster his image as the champion of a new-look, democratic continent, where good governance, peaceful cohabitation and sustainable economic development became the norm. That vision remains.
With sometimes thinly-masked resentment, other African countries began to accept South Africa as a diplomatic leader in the region, albeit with some reluctance in some quarters. Western governments looked to Mbeki as the man they were prepared to back in the much trumpeted quest to find African solutions to African problems.
South Africa's current Africa policy may be far from perfect, but it has matured, though not without a struggle. Now Pretoria's troops, proudly wearing UN blue berets in the DRC and Burundi, are helping to keep the peace on the continent. They may not yet be seasoned peacekeepers, but they are reported to be professional, somewhat blurring the miserable memory of Lesotho. South Africa currently provides 1,750 troops of almost 11,000 UN peacekeepers in the DRC.
Pretoria's mediation skills in some of the regional trouble spots also appear to have improved. But the political and economic turmoil in neighbouring Zimbabwe has led critics inside and outside Africa to conclude that Mbeki's policy of quiet diplomacy towards President Robert Mugabe has failed.
No doubt Mbeki is hoping that Zimbabwe will fade into the background, at least for now, as he conducts his high profile visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mbeki's mission is to assess developments in consolidating peace in the DRC as well as monitoring the progress of the all-party transitional government headed by Kabila and set up on 30 June last year, marking 43 years of independence from the colonial power, Belgium. The first democratic elections in Congo are scheduled in 2005.
But Pretoria also wants to do serious business with Congo.
Mbeki, along with his foreign minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and other high-ranking officials and business leaders accompanying him to the DRC, will be keen to boost bilateral relations and promote economic cooperation between Kinshasa and Pretoria.
A statement released by Pretoria ahead of Mbeki's visit said "the DRC has enormous economic potential for the South African private sector in general and the mining sector in particular".
There are rich pickings to be had in the DRC, potentially one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. It has vast deposits of gold, diamonds, copper, uranium, cobalt and coltan - used in cellular phones and nuclear reactors. But Congo's mining sector has suffered after years of mismanagement and wholesale pillaging during the Mobutu years, followed by instability and insecurity under the two Kabilas.
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Apart from mining, defence, security, agriculture, transport and communications are other key sectors ripe for expansion in the DRC, with its devastated infrastructure and almost-existent national road network.
The United Nations has reported systematic looting of Congo's wealth by central players in the war that sucked in half of the DRC's nine immediate neighbours, as well as countries farther afield.
"South Africa is a brother country," Congo's finance minister, Andre Phillipe Futa, told Reuters. "If the companies can succeed, it will have a highly desirable impact on direct investment in this country."
Pretoria's Trade and Industry Minister, Alec Erwin, commented that "There will be more South African investors in the DRC in the coming years". His remarks came after talks with Congolese ministers of mining, transport, public works and infrastructure who sit on an economic and financial committee headed by the former rebel leader, Jean Pierre Bemba. Bemba serves as one of four vice presidents in the DRC.
Erwin concluded that South Africa "would provide the required expertise in these fields and encourage businessmen to invest in the Democratic Republic of Congo".
The South Africans must be hoping that, as they have helped to broker peace in the DRC and among their neighbours, they are now well well-placed to clinch some profitable deals.
