President Thabo Mbeki’s office was unmoved on Wednesday by assertions that he is to abandon what has been labelled as his approach of quiet diplomacy toward Zimbabwe.
”We have never classified our diplomacy as quiet or loud or whatever,” presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo said in Pretoria.
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai earlier in the day said Mbeki was ready to opt for a new strategy to help end the crisis in Zimbabwe.
”He recognises that the quiet diplomacy has not produced the requisite result,” the Movement for Democratic Change leader said, according to the French news agency Agence France Presse.
Khumalo said: ”I don’t know what Mr Tsvangirai is talking about. The president does not know the meaning of the word ‘quiet diplomacy’.”
He said that outsiders could not impose solutions on Zimbabwe.
”We have consistently been arguing that Zimbabweans themselves must deal with the challenges they face,” Khumalo said.
Tsvangirai told reporters in Harare: ”I think what President Mbeki can do and which he assured me he is going to do, is to change tack, to change strategy around how to influence the course of events in Zimbabwe.”
Tsvangirai was responding to a question on whether he had an idea of the reason behind the lightning visit to Harare on Tuesday by South Africa’s Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
”I am not privy to information around her visit… [but] I am sure these are some of the initiatives that are taking place, but I don’t know the full details,” he said.
Mlambo-Ngcuka flew in Tuesday afternoon for talks with President Robert Mugabe and his deputy Joyce Mujuru and said she had come to help ”synchronise” Pretoria’s policies with Harare.
”I was getting a global understanding of the challenges, and we are challenged,” she said, without giving details.
State media reported this week that Mugabe has rejected pressure from fellow African leaders to re-start talks with the opposition that stalled three years ago.
Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba was quoted by The Herald newspaper as saying that the ruling Zanu-PF party would restrict its contacts with the opposition to Parliament.
Tsvangirai sounded upbeat about the prospect of Mbeki taking on a greater role to end the political and economic crises in Zimbabwe.
”President Mbeki has a role to play in the solution of the Zimbabwe crises but has failed to do so over the last three years through quiet diplomacy because he believed strongly that he could persuade President Robert Mugabe to see that he was facing a precipice.
”The problem is not with President Mbeki, the problem is in Zimbabwe with President Mugabe,” said Tsvangirai.
He said Mugabe needs to ”realise that he has put the country in a cul de sac and that he needs to negotiate himself out of an irreconcilable corner”.
Zimbabwe is in the throes of economic and political crises with unemployment hovering at over 70%, severe shortages of fuel and food and hyperinflation that is rendering the national currency worthless.
A housing demolition campaign launched nearly two months ago has compounded the crisis as hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have been left homeless and destitute. – Sapa