Zimbabwe: The worm turns

An apparent about-turn by South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) on the burning Zimbabwe issue comes in the wake of the detention of an alleged South African spymaster by that country.

The public change in stance towards Zimbabwe — which has been associated until now with a policy of “silent diplomacy” and turning a blind-eye to humanitarian abuses in that country — was picked up on Tuesday by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) which publicly welcomed the change of heart although it did not link it to the spy story.

The Foreign Affairs department’s spokesperson has declined to comment at this stage about the spy incident — but it is believed to have been pivotal in the ruling party’s changed public stance towards Zimbabwe.

Last week an Intelligence Ministry spokesperson said in a statement that it was aware of media reports but to “the best of our knowledge” the information did not provide any basis for concluding that South Africa was involved in illegally soliciting information about Zimbabwe.

The statement noted that the intelligence services were in touch with their Zimbabwean counterparts at all times.

The Rapport newspaper reported on Sunday that a 40-year-old white South African who apparently tried to “turn” the head of the counter-intelligence chief of the Zimbabwe Central Intelligence Organisation had been taken into detention at Victoria Falls in December.

It was also reported that other prominent Zimbabweans, including a ruling Zanu-PF Member of Parliament, Phillip Chiyangwa, a banker Tendai Matambonadzo, and a Zanu-PF official Itai Marchi, had been also detained.

It was reported that Chiyangwa had last week denied in the High Court in Harare that he had received about R60 000 ($10 000) a month from a South African agent in exchange for information about economic and political developments in that country.

South Africa’s eTV news on Monday night also made the link between the South African government’s apparent change in stance towards Zimbabwe — and the spy story. It also reported that the South African authorities were not commenting on the incident.

Meanwhile Cosatu, which is an alliance partner of the South African ruling ANC, has noted “with pleasure” comments made by a top party official which turned up the heat on the Zimbabwean Government.

Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven was responding on Tuesday to remarks made on Monday by ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe who expressed concern that the Zimbabwean official opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) required permission to hold public meetings.

Motlanthe made the remarks after a meeting of the ruling party’s national executive committee.

He said: “We have been concerned about several things. The MDC is a party that participates in Parliament and it controls several municipalities. This [having to ask for permission to hold meetings] impairs their ability to interact with their constituencies.”

Craven said: “We are heartened by the secretary general’s historic remarks, coming shortly before the forthcoming elections [in March] in our neighbouring country, on the need to level the playing field, the removal of restrictions on opposition parties and the call for the police to behave in an impartial manner.”

This time the ANC will find it difficult to criticise Cosatu for attempting to carry out a second fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe.

After its delegation was booted out of the country last October, Cosatu wrote to the Zimbabwe Labour Minister Paul Mangwana about a new mission and is awaiting a reply. However, Mangwana was reported in the Daily Mirror as saying that if Cosatu “bulldozed its way into the country”, it was going to meet the same fate as last year.

He was quoted as saying that “unwanted people are thrown away. If they come we will force them into the next Kombi.”

The gap in approaches by Cosatu and the ANC over Zimbabwe, however, may have closed significantly — with both now acknowledging that the conditions for holding free and fair elections aren’t exactly in place — but Craven did object to a comment made by Motlanthe on SABC TV news that Cosatu’s agenda — to visit the country last year — was motivated by the desire to attract headlines in the media. Craven said on Tuesday: “This uncharacteristic comment borders on an attack on Cosatu’s integrity when it addresses these important issues.”

“Cosatu, acting under a mandate from its national congress, has at all times been concerned only to defend the human rights and economic well-being of our fellow-workers in Zimbabwe and to show solidarity with our comrades in the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions,” Craven, who is also editor of the Shopsteward Journal, added.

Pressure will now be on the African National Congress to resolve the remaining tensions with its alliance partner — but the hands are now apparently outstretched publicly to find a common path over Zimbabwe. To mix a metaphor: An alleged spy seems to have turned into a fly in Zimbabwe’s political ointment. ‒ I-Net Bridge