Howard Barrell
President Thabo Mbeki said this week that the crisis in Zimbabwe was the result of a failure to redistribute land in the country – rather than a violent manipulation of a grievance for electoral purposes by Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe.
In an address to the nation on Thursday night, Mbeki also rejected calls on him to abandon his softly-softly diplomacy on the Zimbabwean crisis. “Our government will work persistently 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 their country,” he said.
Mbeki also extended his “sympathies to the families of Callie and Monique Strydom”, the two South Africans being held by Islamist rebels in the Philippines. “We say to them that our government is working very hard together with the government of the Philippines and other governments to make sure that Callie and Monique are rescued from the situation now where they are being held hostage. I am convinced we will succeed.”
He appealed to South Africans to help bring about “correct solutions” to the crisis in Zimbabwe – as well as that in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“We must do this without arrogance, without seeking to impose ourselves on anybody and without the intoxication or the delusion of the exercise of power we neither have nor desire.”
In making this comment, he appeared to be ruling out any chance that he would apply economic measures against Zimbabwe to force a satisfactory outcome there.
Mbeki said he had sought to bring the British and Zimbabwean governments together in 1998 to resolve the land issue and ensure the availability to Harare of aid money promised for land redistribution. But these attempts had failed to bear fruit.
“The results of the failure to deal with this matter in the manner agreed in 1998 is what has led to the events which … have dominated our media in the recent period.”
South African policy on the crisis was guided by, among others, a need “to end the violence that has attended” efforts to resolve the land issue and “to create conditions for the withdrawal from the farms they have occupied of the demonstrating war veterans”.
Mugabe had “fully supported these objectives” at the Victoria Falls summit on Good Friday, which also involved President Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, President Sam Nujoma of Namibia and himself, Mbeki said.
He said he had been encouraged by elements of the meeting between British and Zimbabwean government delegations in London on April 27 at which both had confirmed “the importance and urgency of land reform in Zimbabwe” and recommitted themselves to decisions taken in 1998 to push ahead with land reform.
Britain had also “reiterated its willingness to help fund a fair land reform programme, while stressing, in this context, the need to end violence and the occupation of farms”. The Zimbabweans, meanwhile, had undertaken to “hold free and fair general elections” as soon as a delimitation commission had finished its report.
South Africa was “firmly committed to support and promote … the positive results that were achieved at both the Victoria Falls and London meetings, as are the rest of our region and continent”.
Mbeki confirmed that South Africa had made a commitment to provide a contingent from the South African National Defence Force to join the monitors to be sent by the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity to Congo.
“We have taken this step because as a government and a people, we see it as a human imperative that this strategically important country in Africa … should, like ourselves and in the common interest, enjoy conditions of peace, democracy, national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and social and economic progress.
“This is the vision of a South Africa, a Southern Africa and Africa that, during the African century, must stand out for their dedication to the objective of creating a caring society,” Mbeki said.