President Thabo Mbeki has promised support for church relief efforts for people displaced under Zimbabwe’s so-called urban clean-up campaign.
He made the undertaking during a meeting with representatives of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) in Pretoria on Friday afternoon, church leaders told reporters.
The SACC delegation briefed Mbeki on its findings after a one-day fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe.
What they found there, said Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, was ”shocking, horrendous and heart-rending”.
”People are in a desperate state,” he said.
SACC president Russel Botman said Mbeki told the delegation he is awaiting a United Nations envoy report on the situation in Zimbabwe. It is expected to be concluded in about a week.
Once he has read that, Mbeki will have another meeting with the delegation to map a way forward, Botman said.
In the meantime, the SACC intends launching a relief effort for people left destitute by the Zimbabwean government’s eviction campaign.
”The president said he will support that,” Botman said.
He described Zimbabwean images of people forced to leave their homes and brave the winter with only one set of clothes, and of babies with no blankets.
”The operation must stop,” Botman said. ”There is no choice. We cannot see that process going through.”
The SACC is to send another delegation to South Africa’s neighbour on Monday.
Botman said the SACC made no appeal to Mbeki for any intervention in that country. Friday’s meeting was aimed solely at informing the president of what the delegation had seen and heard while there.
The SACC is of the opinion that a political solution can be found for Zimbabwe’s problems — by the people and political parties of that country themselves.
Zimbabwe’s Operation Restore Order, which the government claims is aimed at ridding cities of criminality and improving living conditions, is believed to have left hundreds of thousands of people homeless after widespread shack demolitions.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Thursday the government will build two million new houses for the homeless by 2010.
Botman said the SACC has appreciation for the fact that Mbeki is unable to make a concrete response pending the UN report.
Once that report is out, any intervention should focus on the pain and suffering Zimbabweans are experiencing, he said.
”We will then be in a position to challenge even the UN.”
Botman urged church members to pray for Zimbabweans and to come up with ways of responding to their needs.
”They must know that people in South Africa are thinking of them.”
Mbeki declined to comment at the conclusion of the meeting at the Union Buildings.
Earlier on Friday, the African Christian Democratic Party said Mbeki has ”long exceeded his capacity to excuse not acting on a matter that will destabilise the entire southern region of Africa”.
It also criticised the Southern African Development Community and the African Union for failing to act.
”We applaud the efforts of the SACC and other religious institutions and NGOs that have … worked tirelessly to bring stability and mobilise Zimbabweans and other African states to turn this situation around.”
If Mugabe’s ”inhumane” actions are not stopped, the party said in a statement, ”it will lead to genocide”.
”It is hypocritical for President Mbeki to believe that the problems in Zimbabwe must be dealt with internally. We know from the South African experience that, had our neighbours and the rest of the world adopted this attitude, we would not have witnessed a new democracy.” — Sapa