The Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) 2007 mandate to South Africa to broker an agreement between Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change should be viewed as an extension of the "quiet diplomacy" that has been the hallmark of the South African and SADC approach to the Zimbabwe crisis since 2000.
"Since the fateful events of March 11 to 13 and the enormous amount of media attention that surrounded them, I have read numerous reports about the brutality of the state’s response to a peaceful public gathering. Yet the one that has remained fixed in my mind is an SMS I received from MDC secretary general Tendai Biti the day after his release," writes Brian Raftopoulos.
It appears that President Thabo Mbeki’s recent letter on Zimbabwe is designed to achieve two major objectives. Firstly to stay close to Mugabe as the negotiations on a way out of the Zimbabwe crisis proceed; and secondly to use the politics of Zimbabwe to attack his opponents on both the left and the right in South Africa.