Diplomats have been stunned by an attack on Australian Prime Minister John Howard by South Africa’s acting Foreign Affairs Director General, Abdul Minty, at a briefing of 20 Commonwealth heads of mission this week.
Minty is said to have lambasted Howard for lacking objectivity as chairperson of the Commonwealth “troika” on Zimbabwe and for breaching confidentiality Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa confirmed the briefing, in Pretoria on Wednesday, but declined to divulge its contents.
He said Minty would hold an off-the-record briefing with journalists on Thursday afternoon.
Approached for comment, Australian High Commissioner Ian Wilcock said only that Minty had outlined “South African perspectives on the Commonwealth troika. I responded to a number of points and look forward to further dialogue with the South African authorities.”
Other Commonwealth diplomats at the meeting said Wilcock complained to Minty that South Africa had made no previous attempt to convey its dissatisfaction with Howard’s troika chairmanship.
“Doing so for the first time, in front of all of us, was very discourteous and embarrassing,” the diplomat said. “There seems to be a coordinated move to de-legitimise Howard, split the Commonwealth on race lines and force the Australians out of the game on Zimbabwe. A whole anti-West thing seems to be going on at the moment.”
Minty could not be contacted on Thursday morning.
His briefing appears to be part of a concerted thrust by President Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo to neutralise Zimbabwe’s Commonwealth critics and reverse international sanctions against it.
It coincided with the publication of a letter by Obasanjo to Howard arguing for the lifting of sanctions on the grounds that Zimbabwe was substantially normalised.
The Nigerian leader also attacked Australia for undermining its role as “honest broker” on Zimbabwe by imposing its own sanctions last year. South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told journalists last week Wednesday that South Africa shared Obasanjo’s perspective.
There is speculation in diplomatic circles that Obasanjo’s letter is “extremity bargaining. He probably does not expect the Commonwealth to lift the suspension, given that Zimbabwe has met none of its conditions,” said one diplomat. “But he wants to stave off further sanctions.”
In Wednesday’s attack, Minty also apparently accused Howard of breaching confidentiality by disclosing the contents of a telephone call from Mbeki and Obasanjo he took at Honolulu airport while en route to the United States.
Pressed by US journalists, Howard revealed Obasanjo had said he saw no purpose to the scheduled meeting of the troika next month to review Zimbabwe’s one-year Commonwealth suspension.
It is understood Howard has tried for several months to extract a clear commitment to the meeting from Mbeki and Obasanjo.
Mamoepa said the meeting “remained under discussion between the three principals”. But the emerging South African line appears to be that no further sanctions should be imposed, as reconciliation in Zimbabwe is a key element of the troika’s mandate.
Minty is also understood to have repeated Mbeki’s website attack on Australia over travel advisories. Diplomatic observers described Mbeki’s complaint that these were “racist” as “completely paranoid. Advisories are a standard service, and because of the terrorist threat currently apply to much of the world.”
The editor of the Zimbabwe Independent, Iden Wetherell, on Thursday slammed Obasanjo’s letter as “delusional” and “fictional”.
“The troika is not supposed to be ‘an honest broker’,” Wetherell said. “It was to act against Zimbabwe if its presidential election failed to meet Commonwealth norms.”
With the year’s suspension up next month, President Robert Mugabe’s government had made no progress on the Commonwealth’s demands for engagement on land reform, electoral reform and dialogue with the opposition.
Obasanjo’s letter had revealed his pro-Mugabe bias by saying land reform was a “response to the situation in the country at the time”. If this was a reference to land invasions, the “situation” was masterminded by Zanu-PF, Wetherell said.
Obasanjo also claimed in his letter that Zimbabwe had set aside Z$4-billion to compensate dispossessed white farmers. Wetherell said the only publicly known figure was the Z$10-million in the budget for compensation.
The Nigerian leader had also referred to the Zimbabwe government’s “dialogue with farmers” on restoring land to them.
Far from a concession, Wetherell remarked, this was a reaction to the more than 50% plunge in Zimbabwe’s agricultural output and the fact that half the seized land allocated to individuals under the A2 scheme had not been taken up because of lack of capital, equipment and farming expertise.
In his letter Obasanjo had included 54 000 indigenous farmers among the beneficiaries of land reform, whereas only 27 000 had in fact taken farms.
He had also claimed that Mugabe had set up a complaints mechanism on the land programme and that those guilty of malpractices had been brought to book. “We’re not aware of this,” Wetherell said. “Nothing has happened to the governor of Mashonaland West, who has irregularly helped himself to several farms.”
Similarly, the media knew nothing of government efforts to address concerns about draconian anti-press measures in the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, as claimed by Obasanjo. “They’re amending the Act only to ensure prosecutions succeed.”
On Obasanjo’s claim that the police had “apologised” for torturing Movement for Democratic Change MP Job Sikhala, and would take action against the perpetrators, he said no one in Zimbabwe knew of this.
A Zimbabwean observer said state violations of human rights in Zimbabwe remained rife, and Obasanjo’s suggestion that violence emanated from both government and “non-government agencies” was nonsense. NGOs confirmed that 90% of violations were by ruling party members.
He described as “ludicrous” Obasanjo’s claim that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had undertaken to discourage the offensive against Zimbabwe in the British media.