OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bulawayo | Friday 1.30pm.
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe greeted each other with bear hugs in Bulawayo on Friday ahead of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair.
The two leaders walked hand-in-hand along a red carpet and waved to a crowd of about 200 of Mugabe’s supporters before being whisked off to the trade fair grounds.
Zimbabwe is the region’s second largest economy and South Africa’s major trading partner in southern Africa, but only one South African firm is participating in the event in this country’s second largest city.
Mbeki, who is expected to discuss the Zimbabwean crisis with Mugabe later Friday, stuck doggedly to his diplomatic approach to Zimbabwe in an address to the nation in South Africa on Thursday.
He said South Africa will “work consistently and without making the noise of empty drums to help the sister people of Zimbabwe to find a just and lasting solution to the real and pressing land question in that country.”
But he remained mute on the intimidation and murder of political opponents of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and the Zimbabwean president’s hardline statements on Wednesday that he will not order the invaders to leave the farms.
Instead, Mbeki told his domestic detractors that South Africa will not adopt a “counter-productive holier-than-thou attitude” towards the crisis north of its border. — AFP