President Thabo Mbeki’s ”dithering, inaction and often tacit support” are largely to blame for the current bloody shambles in Zimbabwe, says Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon.
”Let me put this bluntly: much of the blame for the present lamentable condition of Zimbabwe must be laid at President Mbeki’s door,” he said in his weekly newsletter, published on the DA’s SA Today website on Friday.
For reasons of sentiment, as well as practicality, Mbeki was the one person outside Zimbabwe with the greatest possible leverage over its President, Robert Mugabe.
”We are that country’s biggest trading partner and, as rotating chair of the United Nations Security Council this month, able to place the matter squarely on the world’s agenda.
”Yet Mr Mbeki’s dithering, inaction and often tacit support have let us all down — both the people of Zimbabwe and the people of South Africa, who live every day with the disastrous consequences of Mugabe’s wrong-headed policies,” Leon said.
His sharply critical comments come in the wake of the arrest, beating and torture last weekend of Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai by members of Mugabe’s security establishment.
”While the world condemned [this], the African Union confessed to being ’embarrassed’ by Zimbabwe [and] for two days South Africa remained deafeningly silent.
”On Tuesday, foreign affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa issued a bland, if not wholly predictable, statement: Zimbabwe’s problems should be solved by the people of that country.
”Amid justifiable howls of outrage, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad sounded a little tougher: he urged the Zimbabwe government to ‘respect the rights of all Zimbabweans and leaders of various political parties’.
”Yet the damage to our already tarnished reputation as an honest broker in the Zimbabwean conflict had been done. Pahad’s statement was too little, way too late.”
Leon said Mbeki had ensured Zimbabwe was provided with a steady supply of electricity and fuel, ”despite Mugabe’s inability to pay his bills and his continued economic mismanagement”.
In June 2003, Mbeki had explicitly promised the World Economic Forum the Zimbabwe crisis would be resolved ”within a year” and that talks between Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change were taking place — a claim that was furiously denied by both parties.
In July that year, Mbeki had gone further, reportedly promising United States President George Bush that Mugabe would ”step down” by December, and assuring him: ”We have urged the government and the opposition to get together. They are indeed discussing all issues. That process is going on.”
Hindsight confirmed Mbeki had been ”merely drawing the heat off Mugabe and buying him time”.
South Africa had said little despite the naked assault on civil liberties and free political action in Zimbabwe, a clamp-down on the courts and the media, Mugabe’s ransacking of the public purse and the wholesale perversion of land ”reform” in the interests of Mugabe’s cronies.
”Most telling of all has been our government’s continuous policy of whitewashing the shamelessly rigged elections there in 2002 and 2005.
”While foreign observer missions — including the DA’s — condemned these ruthless exercises in state terror, Mr Mbeki and the ANC hailed them both as legitimate, warmly congratulating Mugabe on ‘a convincing majority win’ and a ‘peaceful, credible and well-organised election which we feel reflects the will of the people’.
”In what Orwellian world of doublespeak could the bloody shambles to our north … be described as peaceful, never mind credible or well-organised?” Leon asked.
He called for urgent action on Zimbabwe, including condemnation of the weekend arrest of Tsvangirai by South Africa, the imposition of ”smart sanctions” against Mugabe and the facilitation of talks between the two factions of the MDC and the ruling Zanu-PF.
”The South African government’s record in aiding and abetting the Mugabe regime is a shameful blot on our international reputation. We stand culpable of sustaining the life of one of the world’s most despotic regimes,” Leon said. — Sapa