Zimbabwe is the only blot on President Thabo Mbeki’s otherwise successful foreign policy, says The Economist in its April 8 survey on South Africa.
Epitomising the transformation in South Africa’s relationship with the rest of the world since 1990 as ”remarkable”, The Economist notes that South Africa has moved from being an international pariah under apartheid to become one of the most engaged, open and connected countries in the world.
While the re-engagement was ”inevitable”, given that South Africa has always been the continent’s leading economy, Mbeki is seen as having added his own twist via a foreign policy based on African solutions to African problems.
”It is likely to prove his most important legacy.”
The Economist sees Mbeki’s other foreign policy ambition as persuading Africa to set up its own institutions and mechanisms for solving its problems, ”thus ending the constant, humiliating requests for aid to the West’s former colonial powers”.
Thus: ”Mr Mbeki has led South African interventions all over the continent to prove his country’s African-ness and show its commitment to the continent’s problems.”
In this context, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) is believed to be very much Mbeki’s own idea.
The Economist draws attention to the boom in South African investment in other African countries in recent years while simultaneously noting that the country is sensitive to the resentment of its size, its relative success and, still, its ”whiteness”.
But while The Economist is virtually unstinting in its praise for Mbeki’s international achievements, it is scathing in its criticism of his Zimbabwean policy.
”Here, Mr Mbeki’s Africanist credentials trump his Nepad ambitions that African countries should help each other uphold standards of good governance, human rights and democracy, none of which Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, seems to care much about.”
It concludes: ”By any standard, Zimbabwe has been Mr Mbeki’s biggest foreign-policy failure.” — I-Net Bridge