Washington, DC — Nigerian oil may be crucial to U.S. energy needs but South African President Thabo Mbeki seems to be the crucial figure in U.S. political needs in Africa, and also increasingly important in other contentious areas of the world.
As President George Bush put it after the two met Friday afternoon, in addition to discussion on Darfur peacekeeping, "We talked about a lot of issues. We talked about Iran, we talked about the Middle East, we talked about our bilateral relations and his [Mbeki's] government's commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS and our willingness to provide over $600 million to the folks in South Africa to help deal with this terrible pandemic."
This dollar commitment was undoubtedly facilitated by what appears to be a radical shift of attitude on AIDS by Mbeki and his government. For the last month, South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has been stressing that the South African government now believes that HIV causes AIDS—something President Mbeki has questioned for years.
Friday's meeting was short—just 45 minutes—and kept low key. Although the two men made formal statements to the press, they took no questions. In his remarks, however, President Mbeki offered a faint clue that security and anti-terrorism forms an important part of U.S. South African relations while speaking of the need to support Somalia's transitional government, now under constant attack in the capital, Mogadishu, by insurgent militias of the fundamentalist Islamic Courts. "It's an important thing because the problem, one of the big problems, is that as it is, [Somalia] provides a base for terrorists, [they] find safe haven there and then can spread out to the rest of the continent. It's something that is of shared concern."
One of the hallmarks of the Bush administration's Africa policy has been the steady emergence of the continent as an area of strategic concern and importance. In an interview last year, NATO commander, Marine General James L. Jones said that NATO should be called the U.S. European and African Command. "NATO will have to quit being such an eastward-focused alliance and will have to react to some of the compelling realities of the southern flank," he said.
This concern has intensified with events in Somalia, the July coup that overthrew the government of Mauritania, and the continuing conflict in Darfur.
The administration has concluded that South Africa has both the muscle and the prestige to take the lead in forging a necessary U.S.-Africa strategic bonding.
Darfur may be the testing ground, although neither Bush nor Mbeki gave any indication as to whether they had reached agreement on a specific role for South Africa in that conflict. United Nations Security Council action and an increase in peacekeeping troops is "very urgent" said Mbeki. "We will absolutely do everything to make sure that, from the African side, we remove any obstacle there might be to such bigger deployment in Darfur, he added.
South Africa joins the Security Council as a non-permanent member in January and it is there that U.S.-South African coordination on Darfur will become most evident.
There is a larger role for South Africa than the African continent in administration thinking. Given the link between poverty and terrorism the failed World Trade organization talks also formed an important part of the Bush-Mbeki conversation. Specifically Bush asked for and got a commitment from Mbeki for assistance in reviving the deadlocked talks. But Mbeki emphasized that poor countries need greater access to the markets of rich countries.
Its position on the Security Council will also give South Africa a more influential voice on Middle East issues. Neither Bush nor Mbeki gave any clue about their discussion on this volatile area of the world, but the day before the two men met, White House press spokesman, Tony Snow, suggested to reporters that with the right leaders, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission might be a model for Iraq:
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"You know, Nelson Mandela had the ability to get people who were committing acts of violence to stand down and stop doing it. And you do need transformational leaders who know how to turn old hostilities into a new sense of national unity."
On Thursday, Mbeki was received at the Capitol by incoming House Majority Leader, Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-California) and Donald Payne (Democrat-New Jersey) and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The South African leader also met members of the African Diplomatic Corps in Washington, briefing them on the latest efforts to resolve Africa's most serious conflicts.
