disarray
Howard Barrell
Politicians from all major parties and some international relations experts are worried by what they see as disarray in South African foreign policy exposed by the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
They believe the impasse is undermining the country’s interests in the region and could mar President Nelson Mandela’s hosting of the Non- Aligned Movement summit, the biggest international conference held on local soil, which takes place in Durban over the next six days.
They say South Africa’s use of peaceful diplomacy has manifestly failed to achieve negotiated progress towards an interim government of national unity in war-torn Congo and charge that no alternative strategy has been developed. Instead, they argue, the initiative now lies with Angola and Zimbabwe, which have intervened militarily to prop up Congolese President Laurent Kabila, and with Rwanda and Uganda, which are giving military support to an alliance of anti-Kabila rebels based on ethnic Tutsis from the east of the Congo.
Government representatives fiercely contest this view. They argue it is too early to judge the success or failure of South Africa’s emphasis on peaceful diplomacy and its insistence that Kabila set up a broadly based transitional government which includes the rebels. They say the policy will bear fruit in time.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfred Nzo continued his diplomatic peace mission late this week with stopovers at the headquarters of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa, in the Angolan capital Luanda and the Congo capital Kinshasa. He was accompanied by the foreign ministers of Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, and a senior OAU official.
A senior African National Congress politician said this week that the apparent failure of South African policy on the Congo was “embarrassing”.
“We arranged a soft landing for Kabila in Kinshasa last year when we persuaded the Nigerians not to back Mobutu Sese Seko against him – on the understanding that Kabila would create a broad-based government in the Congo. But he has now told us to get lost,” the ANC source said. “We are in disagreement with our old ally, Angola. They feel our appeals for peaceful diplomatic initiatives do not work.
Zimbabwe, for Mugabe’s own reasons, has broken with us. And Rwanda and Uganda are pursuing their own military agendas in Congo.”
He said the government had no real alternative to offer.
Opposition leaders agreed South Africa was caught in an impasse.
Peter Vale, professor of Southern African studies at the University of the Western Cape, said the crisis in South African regional policy might be shortlived. “But South Africa’s propensity to go for governments of national unity as the only solution to problems like that in the Congo suggests that there is something fundamentally flawed in our policy- making.”
But John Stremlau, Jan Smuts professor of international relations at Wits University, thought South Africa’s support for negotiations leading to a transitional government of national unity was the only sensible course to follow in the Congo.
Mandela and Mbeki are understood to have put a detailed plan for progress to a national unity government in Congo to the crisis summit of Southern African Development Community leaders and other Afri- can heads of state in Pretoria last weekend. It was accepted by all present, including Angolan and Zimbabwean diplomats who stood in for their absent leaders.
The plan accepts that the Congo should remain one country, that all
foreign troops should withdraw, that Kabila’s government is
legitimate, that the Congo must guarantee the security of its
neighbours and vice versa, that no country in the region should try to
turn any neighbour into a client state, and that a transitional
government representing all sectors of the population should be set up
to organise democratic elections in the Congo within two years.
To take forward this perspective, the plan suggested that a
representative National Reconciliation and Reconstruction Conference
of the People of Congo be held to agree the composition of a
transitional government, an interim constitutional framework, a
timetable for elections and a mechanism for resolving disputes.
Those at the Pretoria meeting agreed that, during the transition, they
would not try to overthrow the Kabila government or influence
political processes in Congo. For its part, Kabila’s representative
agreed not to resort to repressive measures.