President Thabo Mbeki has lashed out at the Commonwealth for failing to address the land question in Zimbabwe — the root cause of the Southern African country’s current turmoil.
Writing his weekly column posted on the African National Congress website on Friday, Mbeki wrote that except when used to highlight the plight of the white farmer, the land issue is no longer discussed.
“At the Abuja Chogm [Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting], the land question in Zimbabwe was not discussed. Indeed, the land question has disappeared from the global discourse about Zimbabwe, except when it is mentioned to highlight the plight of the former white landowners, and to attribute food shortages in Zimbabwe to the land redistribution programme.”
Mbeki said Zimbabwe’s subsequent suspension from the body is contrary to the goal of assisting the country to unite to find an urgent solution to its economic and political crisis.
He wrote that both the Commonwealth’s observer mission and South Africa’s own group concluded after the 2002 presidential elections that what is needed in Zimbabwe is an “urgent programme of political reconciliation and economic restructuring and transformation that places the people and country of Zimbabwe first and transcends the differences that were demonstrated in the election process”.
“This is also what the heads of government from Uganda and the SADC [Southern African Development Community] countries said to their colleagues at the Abuja Chogm, arguing that the continued isolation of Zimbabwe would not facilitate the achievement of this goal,” he said.
Mbeki accused some members of the Commonwealth of pushing for Zimbabwe’s continued suspension solely to maintain their credibility with the media, regardless of what it means for Zimbabweans.
“Unfortunately, others had already made public statements that one of the principal outcomes of this meeting would be, not a Commonwealth commitment to this goal, but the continuing suspension of Zimbabwe from the councils of the Commonwealth.
“For them, it was important that this objective should be achieved, to maintain their credibility especially with the media, whatever else was decided that might actually relate to the future of the people of Zimbabwe,” he said.
He traces Zimbabwe’s crisis back to 1965 when a British Labour government refused to suppress a rebellion against the British Crown led by Ian Smith.
It “felt that it could not act against its kith and kin in favour of the African majority”, he wrote.
After the Lancaster House talks in 1979 gave Zimbabwe its independence, Britain and the United States undertook to fund its land-reform programme but the money never materialised, Mbeki said.
“The land dispossession carried out by the settler colonial kith and kin through the barrel of the gun had to be sustained, despite the fact that, even in 1979, the then British government recognised the fact that land was at the core of the conflict in Zimbabwe, as did the 2002 Coolum Chogm,” he said.
Mbeki also blamed Australian Prime Minister John Howard for the disintegration of the Commonwealth troika, which was mandated to find a solution to Zimbabwe’s problems.
He said that Howard had unilaterally called for more sanctions against Zimbabwe, against the advice of Nigeria and South Africa. — Sapa
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