South Africa has consistently opposed the imposition of sanctions against the government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and on Saturday repeated its call for diplomacy to solve the crisis affecting its northern neigbour.
Zimbabwe has been in the grip of a serious economic and political crisis for the past three years, marked by a drop in living conditions, the threat of famine and the repression of government opponents.
Reacting to the move by US President George Bush to freeze assets belonging to Mugabe and 76 of his goverment officials, foreign affairs representative Ronnie Mamoepa said: ”South Africa has never believed in sanctions against Zimbabwe.”
”We have put great emphasis on the need for the international community to assist the people of Zimbabwe,” he told AFP.
He said South Africa believed the different parties within Zimbabwe needed to be reconciled, ”therefore setting the basis for economic reconstruction”.
”Mugabe’s policies constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat,” Bush said in the March 6 order freezing the assets.
Actions by the Zimbabwean government were also ”contributing to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law in Zimbabwe, to politically motivated violence and intimidation in that country and to political and economic instability in the southern African region”, Bush charged.
South Africa has repeatedly stated that diplomacy is the only way to deal with Harare, which has become a pariah state in the international community.
South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said earlier this week the government would not condemn Zimbabwe. ”You will never hear that. It is not going to happen as long as this government is in power,” she said.
”The problem with you, is that you are waiting for one word –condemnation — of Zimbabwe,” she told a media briefing on Monday. South Africa’s handling of the political and social instability in Zimbabwe came under the spotlight again last month when it emerged that South Africa and Nigeria were campaigning for
Zimbabwe’s 12-month suspension from the Commonwealth to be lifted. – Sapa-AFP