Having turned the screws on disparate elements in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Burundi, South African mediators know about applying pressure.
The players in Côte d’Ivoire — who have made a pig’s ear out of a carefully crafted French peace deal and a hash of an African follow-up pact — are about to learn this.
On Saturday President Thabo Mbeki will see Guillame Soro of the New Forces rebel movement in Côte d’Ivoire. Soro chose to stay away from Mbeki’s meeting earlier this month, as opposition leaders slid ever more deeply into endemic violence.
So Soro will get the treatment at the presidential guest house: the photo opportunity welcome from Mbeki and some kind words of gratitude for taking the trouble to come calling.
The meeting will complete Mbeki’s first round of getting to know the players in the crisis he has been specially mandated by the African Union to mend.
Soro will be given the same opportunity to state his position as intransigent Ivorean President Laurent Gbagbo and opposition leaders Allasane Ouattara and Alphonse Djedje Mady.
Then Mbeki will turn the matter over to his arm-twisters.
There are those who argue, with some justification, that a deal signed with one’s arm being bent behind one’s back is hardly worth the paper it is written on. This point is regularly made when the carefully crafted settlements in the DRC and Burundi threaten to unravel.
But the inescapable reality is that, without South African mediation, those deals, however tenuous, would not exist.
Mbeki’s bid to revive the failed Ivoirean peace process was supercharged this week by the United Nations. Exasperated and finally infuriated by Gbagbo’s flat-out refusal to comply with the Linas Marcoussis and Accra III deals by bringing the rebels and opposition into the government, France drafted a tough resolution in the United Nations Security Council.
The UN powerhouse gave Mbeki a week’s breathing space to start his consultations. When it became clear that Gbagbo remained unmoved, the Security Council lowered the boom.
All 15 members voted for a 13-month embargo on the sale, supply or transfer of arms to Ivoirean belligerents.
Gbagbo’s ambassador railed against the move, pointing out that the rebels would get arms through informal channels that no Security Council mechanism could plug. Gbagbo himself said he would replace the air force destroyed by French fighters two weeks ago.
If their indignation and defiance are genuine, they simply don’t get it. The UN measure is aimed squarely at Gbagbo, the stumbling block in the peace process.
Mbeki also has the regional giant on his side. Gbagbo and Olusegun Obasanjo, the Nigerian President, are plainly not on speaking terms.
Mbeki, true to form, has sounded conciliatory. He has expressed gratification at signs of progress that are patently not there. He has played the diplomatic card for all it is worth. On Sunday, he can begin the process of holding Gbagbo’s feet to the fire.