A day after Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on Britain to toughen its stance on Zimbabwe and press its neighbours, including South Africa, to intervene, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said ”quiet diplomacy” was showing results.
Speaking at a weekly press conference at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Wednesday, Pahad hailed the constitutional changes agreed to by all the parties in Zimbabwe as a positive development.
The amendment to Zimbabwe’s Constitution was one of the first steps of reform that would help ensure credible elections in the country in 2008.
”This opens up the possibility for the first time in many years to find a political solution that all Zimbabweans would hail,” he said.
Pahad was happy that the talk of the international community of ”regime change” had changed to ”regime transformation, saying the former attitude was one of the major obstacles in finding a way forward in Zimbabwe.
”We have always been convinced that history would prove that those who tried to find a solution that was not antagonistic and [did not] create further problems would be right.”
The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Tutu told Britain’s ITV television network that ”quiet diplomacy” had failed to halt the crumbling of Zimbabwe’s economy and a political and humanitarian crisis.
”By now it ought to be clear that the softly-softly approach — quiet diplomacy — has not worked at all and we want something a little more forthright, a little more categorical,” Tutu told ITV News.
He called on UK President Gordon Brown to press for international efforts to set President Robert Mugabe deadlines to improve the country’s economic and political woes — and threaten punitive measures if improvements are not made.
‘Bad lawyer with a good cause’
Meanwhile, efforts to end the crisis in Zimbabwe cannot be left to South African President Thabo Mbeki alone and Africa as a whole must do more to prevent the collapse of the southern state, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said.
Wade called Mugabe, who denies foreign accusations that he has abused human rights and wrecked Zimbabwe’s once-prosperous economy, a ”bad lawyer with a good cause” to argue.
A grouping of Southern African nations has mandated South Africa’s Mbeki to secure a deal on constitutional reform between Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change ahead of March 2008 presidential and parliamentary polls.
But Wade, who from his small West African country has often sparred with Mbeki in the past over leadership on African issues, said more African heads of state, including himself, should be involved in mediating with Mugabe.
”It’s a big mistake to always say that Zimbabwe should be left to Mbeki,” the Senegalese president, who like Mugabe is in his 80s, told Reuters in an interview late on Tuesday.
”Mbeki is a man who has a huge amount of goodwill, but this is a situation which just one person cannot resolve alone, that much is clear,” he said.
Wade’s comments appeared to diverge from a recommendation by a leading international think-tank this week, which called on the world, including Western powers, to close ranks behind the Mbeki mediation for Zimbabwe.
The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report Western sanctions had failed and attacks on Mugabe by London and Washington were counter-productive.
ICG said the Mbeki mediation ”offers the only realistic chance to escape a crisis that increasingly threatens to destabilise the region”.
But Wade, who has led peace and mediation missions in the past for Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau and Liberia and is a strong advocate of continental initiatives, favoured a broader approach involving more than one African head of state.
”I think Africa has not helped Zimbabwe. I’m convinced that we haven’t helped President Mugabe,” he said. — Sapa, Reuters