South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday he is committed to a peaceful resolution of Zimbabwe’s political crisis, but won’t pressure the country’s embattled leader to hold elections.
Mbeki, in Jamaica attending a summit of Caribbean leaders, was responding to comments made last week by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in an editorial in the New York TImes. Powell had urged South Africa to be more active in ending the political stalemate in bordering Zimbabwe.
”It’s incorrect really to be saying that we should stand outside the borders of Zimbabwe and decide what the Zimbabweans should do about their own country,” Mbeki told reporters in the northern resort town of Ocho Rios.
South Africa would continue engaging Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government and the opposition party to reach an agreement and provide some assistance, but won’t directly intervene, he said.
Asked whether he would push Mugabe to hold elections to insure a peaceful transition of power, Mbeki said ”That’s their decision … The future of Zimbabwe needs to be decided by the Zimbabweans.”
In the New York Times editorial published on June 24, Powell called Mugabe’s government ”a ruthless regime” and implored neighbouring countries, particularly South Africa, to pressure him to compromise with his political opponents.
Mbeki said such an action would be ”incorrect,” saying that if South Africa and another country teamed up to decide policy in the United States, ”everybody would lock us up. They’d think we were crazy.”
Officials in Zimbabwe meanwhile, hurled racial epithets at Colin Powell, yesterday, including branding him an ”Uncle Tom” after his attack on Mugabe.
In a deliberate echo of remarks last autumn by the entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte — who said that Powell adopted a docile mien to preserve his status — Zimbabwe’s official press called him a liar and a self-effacing servant of his white masters.
The tirade appeared aimed at overshadowing the African tour next week by President Bush and other senior officials including Powell.
Powell also promised massive US aid once Mugabe — behind Zimbabwe’s disastrous land confiscations and repressive human rights record — had gone.
For his sins, Powell was described in the state-controlled Herald paper as ”a disgraceful Uncle Tom who always sang his master’s voice to the detriment of social justice and the rights of people of colour”.
The paper, which is owned and controlled by the country’s information minister, Jonathan Moyo, accused the US secretary of state of lying about rights abuses under Mugabe and distorting the advances under the land reform scheme.
Zimbabwe’s opposition has accused the 79-year-old Mugabe of targeting Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai in a desperate attempt to cling to power amid crippling political and economic chaos.
Zimbabwe is in its worst crisis since independence in 1980, with 269% inflation and 70% unemployment. US President George Bush is expected to discuss Zimbabwe’s problems with Mbeki when he makes his first trip to Africa next week. – Sapa-AP