A top official of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) said in Harare on Thursday that his party supports the appointment of former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa as a mediator in the alleged Zimbabwean crisis with Britain.
The broadcast remarks by ANC Secretary General Kgalema Motlanthe represented a concession to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, who has opposed a United Nations mediator and advocated Mkapa instead.
Mugabe blames years of economic decline and social conflict in Zimbabwe on its former colonial master, Britain.
The appointment of Mkapa has been viewed with skepticism by the British authorities, who say there is no need for mediation between Harare and London because Zimbabwe’s problems are purely internal.
Under Mugabe, the government has seized formerly prosperous white-owned farms, sending agricultural production into a tailspin and turning Zimbabwe, once a food exporter, into a food-importing nation on the brink of starvation in recent drought.
Last year, security forces razed shack settlements and homes around large cities, leaving hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans homeless going into the chilly Southern African winter.
Motlanthe flew into Harare for a brief visit during which he visited the farm of Zimbabwe’s defence force chief Constantine Chiwenga, according to the state broadcaster. His visit came barely two weeks after Zimbabwe appeared to snub South African initiatives to end the biting economic and social crisis by insisting there was no need for UN intervention.
South African President Thabo Mbeki was reported to have been pushing for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to visit Harare.
But Mugabe said that Mkapa would instead act as a mediator between Zimbabwe and former colonial power Britain.
In an apparent conciliatory bid, Motlanthe said the ANC had taken its cue from Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF).
”That’s the view of Zanu-PF, that’s what we go along with,” he said in televised comments at Harare International airport.
”We’d support whatever initiative that is viewed and regarded by comrades in Zimbabwe as the best possible route towards advancing the interests of the people,” he added. – Sapa-DPA