President Thabo Mbeki’s spokesperson has denied media reports that the president’s motorcade was involved in a shooting incident on Thursday afternoon in the Haitian capital during the country’s New Year independence celebrations.
”There have been reports in some news media that the president’s motorcade was involved in a shooting incident in the Haitian capital. This is without foundation. There is no cause for concern,” said a statement from Presidential Spokesperson Bheki Khumalo.
Speaking to the Mail & Guardian Online on Friday, Khumalo said the reports of the shooting first emanated from a ”small radio station” in Haiti.
He said inquiries have established that an advance party, consisting mainly of security personnel, was in the vicinity of some shooting and took precautionary action.
Bheki emphasised that Mbeki and those in his immediate party were ”nowhere in the area” where the shooting took place.
”The visit has come to an end and the president will return to the country tomorrow as originally scheduled and will resume a busy domestic programme,” said Khumalo.
Haiti’s 200th anniversary of independence from France was marked on Thursday by celebration and protest. Underscoring deepening political divisions, more than 15 000 government supporters rallied outside the National Palace before more than 5 000 opponents of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide marched toward downtown, shouting ”Down with Aristide!”
Mbeki, who spoke at the celebrations, told the throngs at the celebrations that a ”historic struggle” remains for Africans to overcome poverty and conflict on both sides of the Atlantic.
”We celebrate the Haitian revolution because it dealt a deadly blow to the slave traders who had scoured the coasts of West and East Africa for slaves and ruined the lives of millions of Africans,” said Mbeki.
South Africa offered Haiti R10-million ”as material support” for the celebrations.
On Monday, Mbeki told journalists it was proper that South Africa had donated the money. Those who criticised the action ”don’t know anything about the bicentennial,” Associated Press quoted him as saying.
On Wednesday, a Haitian group slammed Mbeki’s visit as an ”insult to most of us and to the memory of our forefathers who fought for our independence and our liberty during 12 long years”.
But Khumalo rejected the call that Mbeki should not participate in the celebrations of two centuries of Haitian independence from France.
In December last year, Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and presidential legal adviser Mojanku Gumbi had met opposition party representatives in Haiti who had supported his participation in the celebrations, said Khumalo.
At the celebrations on Thursday, riot police fired tear gas and warning shots to scatter the anti-government protesters, and some lay down before the officers, shouting: ”Freedom!”.
Police pushed back a separate group of student protesters who tried to join the march, and demonstrators said student leader Herve Saintilus was wounded when club-wielding police beat him on the head.
”We will not allow Aristide to be a dictator,” said protester Jean Gary Denis (33). ”He is using the bicentennial for his own purposes.”
Aristide’s supporters were equally fervent, knocking down a metal fence and scrambling onto the palace lawn as they crowded toward the podium, chanting ”Aristide is king!”
”1804 was the stinging bee. 2004 is sure to be the honey,” Aristide told supporters. ”It is possible to build a new Haiti because of what is on our flag, and that is ‘united we are strong’.” – AP