As the ”coalition of the willing” makes its last roll of the diplomatic dice at the United Nations in the second week of March, South Africa has to choose where it will sit at the table.
Thus far President Thabo Mbeki’s government has vociferously opposed the United States, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria in their determination to go to war with Iraq. South Africa has taken a principled and prudent line strongly advocating the disarmament of Iraq, but insisting that there is no need to go to war to achieve this.
Because this position has been taken by the overwhelming majority of UN members, there probably will not be a price to pay. There will be no more free plays, however, as the game gets rougher. And South Africa is carrying the chips for other countries.
The heads of state at the implementation committee meeting of the New Programme for African Development (Nepad) asked Mbeki in Abuja in the second week in March to formulate the African line on Iraq.
The good cop, bad cop routine played out by Mbeki and his predecessor has made the South African position even more popular with the anti-war grouping.
Mbeki’s argument has been so clinical and cool that he remains in the loop of leaders consulted by President George W Bush.
Nelson Mandela, however, emotively implied Bush was stupid and arrogant.
The heavy-lifting on this issue has been done by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad. He has been to Iraq three times in recent months, the last time at the head of a team of apartheid-era experts on weapons of mass destruction to deliver some how-to hints on disarmament This attempt to cash in on South Africa’s status as a model disarmer —an appellation applied several times in UN debates by, among others, US Secretary of State Colin Powell — fell rather flat.
Powell himself acknowledged the initiative but neither praised nor criticised it.
Those seeking war at any cost regarded it as a vindication of Bush’s line that Saddam Hussein has not disarmed.
If the Iraqi dictator had got rid of his weapons of mass destruction, there would be no need for the South African team to have gone to Baghdad.
Pahad used the snap debate on Iraq in the National Assembly in the second week of March to reiterate his line that a war in Iraq would mean the end of days for Nepad.
Again there was no immediate response from either Washington or London who were clearly preoccupied with herding into line those countries whose seats on the UN Security Council make them mainstream players.
According to Dumisani Khumalo, South Africa’s ambassador to the UN, this has been a ”brutal process with coercion, threats and inducements.
”This has been going on not only in New York, but in the capitals where the leaders have to explain to their own people what is going on.”
Khumalo was referring specifically to the current African members of the UN powerhouse: Angola, Cameroon and Guinea.
Aziz urged them, and the members of the Security Council of the Non-Aligned Movement (Chile and Mexico) to stay true to the strongly anti-war resolutions passed by the African Union and the NAM.
In reality, the toughest choice currently facing these countries is whether they will be getting their future largesse in dollars or euros.
Should South Africa, playing for the organisation it chairs, not be in this high stakes game? Pahad’s morality and passion were plain in his plea that ”in this House we hear the anguished cries of billions and unite around the slogan ‘disarmament yes, war, no’. This is in our national interest, which coincides with humanity’s interests.”
However, what plays out at Turtle Creek will be a whole other story. When the chips fall we have no guarantee that the French veto against any use of force against Iraq will materialise.
President Jacques Chirac’s government has repeatedly pointed out that, unlike Germany, it does not take a pacifist line on Iraq. It is quite prepared to go to war, if necessary. But not yet.
If France shifts, would the remaining permanent members — China and Russia — be prepared to veto an attack on Iraq? Pahad is right that this is a crucial time for the UN. Its credibility is a stake, but not its very existence.
The UN will survive even an unauthorised US strike on Saddam because the US will want it to. This is not a time for doom-saying and hand-wringing. Here is an opportunity to forge a more muscular, mature relationship based on strength and mutual benefit with the world’s remaining super power, to the benefit of the continent.
The US badly needs friends now. More importantly, it will need oil if the Iraqi situation drags on. Africa currently supplies almost a fifth of the US oil needs.
The US knows Africa does not want war in Iraq. It should be left in no doubt about what Africa does want and need.