Peter Kononczuk, London | Tuesday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki will arrive in Britain on Tuesday for a state visit during which he will seek badly-needed investment and may face questions on his policies on Zimbabwe and Aids.
It is the second state visit to London by a South African leader in five years, following on from former president Nelson Mandela’s trip in 1996.
British officials say the four-day mission underlines the importance Prime Minister Tony Blair’s newly re-elected Labour government places on boosting business and political links with its former colony.
Mbeki will have tea with Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday and hold a private meeting with Blair two days later.
High on agenda will be the thorny issue of Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe’s efforts to redress colonial-era inequalities in land ownership have been accompanied by the violent occupations of white farms by blacks.
Britain and South Africa clashed last year when Peter Hain, then a junior foreign minister, criticised Mbeki’s “soft” diplomacy towards Harare.
Diplomats say the spat is forgotten and the British High Commissioner to Pretoria, Anne Grant, said in a radio interview on Friday there would be a “frank and constructive exchange on Zimbabwe”.
It is understood Britain will not be insisting that Mbeki adopts a tougher approach.
“He (Mbeki) is in regular contact with Zimbabwe and knows its problems even better than we do,” said a highly placed British diplomatic source.
“The prime minister will be looking for an assessment from Mbeki on how he sees developments in Zimbabwe and how we can pursue complementary action” to bring it out of its political and economic crisis, he added.
Trade between Britain and South Africa rose by 40% last year to about four billion pounds sterling (6.5-billion euros, $5.5 billion), but both countries are keen for that to increase.
“Africa needs a successful South Africa,” said the diplomatic source.
“We see South Africa as a model of democracy and economic success in Africa of which other countries need to take note.”
Mbeki, 59, who took over from Mandela as president two years ago and was a student in Britain in the 1960s, will be accompanied by eight of his ministers and a business delegation of more than 60.
Their task meeting their British counterparts will be reassuring companies here that Mbeki is capable of maintaining political stability and that South Africa’s crime rate is not a bar to investment.
He is due to address an investment seminar in London on Wednesday.
Mbeki will also use his visit to seek backing for the Millennium Africa Recovery Plan, a rescue plan conceived by the South African leader and the presidents of Algeria and Nigeria to promote development, democracy and peace on the continent.
But one issue Mbeki may not be keen to see on the agenda is the sensitive topic of how South Africa is handling its Aids crisis.
Officials on both sides deflected questions on the subject, insisting that discussing the epidemic “is not a key objective” of the visit.
Mbeki caused consternation at an international conference in Durban last July when he said he doubted that HIV causes Aids, though since then he has been more restrained in his pronouncements.
Asked at a news briefing why there was a sports minister in the delegation but no health minister, South Africa’s foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said: “We couldn’t bring the whole cabinet because South Africa still needs to run.
“We want sport to be available to young people to expend their energy and creativity. Sport is part of keeping healthy.” – AFP
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