President Thabo Mbeki struck a challenging note for ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) gathered in Durban this week.
He urged them to quit the rarefied, airconditioned atmosphere of the conference centre and visit the squatter camps to experience the poverty prevalent there.
”The things we discuss here must impact on the lives of billions of ordinary people out there — in Durban, Ghaza and elsewhere.
”I am sure the leadership is quite capable of rising to that challenge,” said Mbeki.
He identified poverty, insecurity and imbalance in world governance as the major challenges facing the 115-nation Third World grouping.
NAM had to find solutions to these, Mbeki said.
”It is not in the interests of the powerful developed countries to provide the answers.”
In fact, as the United States enters the final lap of the presidential race, most events in Africa will tend to slip under the White House radar.
Nevertheless, the lines to the Africa desks at the Department of State burned with dispatches from Mauritius and Durban. US sources said there was disappointment, but no real surprises from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Mauritius.
”Same old, same old,” said a veteran African watcher in Foggy Bottom, Washington, DC.
”We had messages from the Mauritian government that SADC was seeking to mend fences — and certainly Prime Minister Paul Berenger indicated this in his pre-summit briefing.
”The language of his peers did not match his message.
”But then again our expectations were not all that high and right now we have other fish to fry.”
There was disappointment and resignation, too, from Europe. ”We left the SADC governments in no doubt about how saddened we are by the double standards and mixed messages on Zimbabwe,” said a European Commission official.
”They make a declaration about democracy and fair elections. This is clearly directed at Zimbabwe. Paul Berenger said this himself.
”But the defensive language of the leaders does not match the mood of that declaration. Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa’s remarks were gratuitous.”
While Mbeki played a relatively low-key role in Mauritius, his new Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sue van der Merwe, raised Western eyebrows at the NAM gathering in Durban.
She said: ”Powerful and dangerous forces have been unleashed through the international effects of economic globalisation on the one hand, and the threat of terrorism on the other.
”The net effect of this is that those who have adopted extreme positions take advantage of the prevailing international turmoil to vent their own discontentment and xenophobia through acts of terror and intimidation.
”These unilateral actions, disregarding the centrality of the United Nations Charter and international law, have become the flagrant response.
”This tendency is further exacerbated by the re-emergence of a type of state behaviour reminiscent of the colonial era, with the emphasis on greater interference in domestic affairs of states in the developing world,” said Van der Merwe.
The latter remarks could hardly have been more wounding to the US. It can live with being called a bully and a xenophobe. But label it colonialist, and you go too far. Van der Merwe’s speech didn’t specifically mentioned the US. Then again, it did not need to.