South Africa's Brave New World by R. W. Johnson

Author:R. W. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141957913
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

THE FIGHT WITHIN THE COMMONWEALTH: ROUND TWO

Mbeki still deeply resented the way he had been defeated by Howard and Blair and determined to reverse that defeat at the troika’s meeting of March 2003, when the one-year suspension period would be up. In January 2003 Malusi Gigaba, president of the ANC Youth League and a frequent conduit for Mbeki’s views, launched a long diatribe against Britain and Australia, ‘the white section of the Commonwealth’, who were guilty of ‘sickening hypocrisy’ in their dealings with Zimbabwe when all they were really concerned about were their own white ‘kith and kin’. Again, it was his master’s voice. The Australians denounced the document as an ‘ignorant and abusive rant unworthy of circulation in a great political movement like the ANC’.78

Another ventriloquized statement followed. Abdul Minty, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, astonished an audience of twenty Commonwealth heads of mission by a blistering attack on John Howard’s behaviour as troika chairman. One diplomat described Minty’s performance as ‘very discourteous and embarrassing. There seems to be a co-ordinated drive to delegitimize Howard, split the Commonwealth on race lines and force the Australians out of the game on Zimbabwe. A whole anti-West thing seems to be going on.’79 Minty also denounced as racist Australia’s issuance of travel advisories warning tourists about potential dangers in South Africa, thus exactly repeating Mbeki’s own allegation in ANC Today (a complaint ridiculed by one diplomat as ‘completely paranoid’). Minty also denounced Howard for disclosing a telephone conversation he had had with Mbeki and Obasanjo – a clear sign that Minty, too, was speaking on Mbeki’s behalf.80

Howard had been trying to extract a clear commitment from Mbeki and Obasanjo to attend a troika meeting on the anniversary of Zimbabwe’s suspension. Australia and New Zealand had both imposed targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his cronies meanwhile, for the situation in Zimbabwe had continued to deteriorate and none of the Commonwealth’s conditions for the restoration of democracy and human rights had been met. In such circumstances Howard had regarded the renewal of the suspension as virtually automatic and had been greatly surprised, while en route back from a visit to the United States, to get a telephone call in Honolulu from Mbeki and Obasanjo in which they said that they could not see any purpose to the troika meeting again.

A letter from Obasanjo to Howard was then published, seeking to justify Mugabe’s position in general and making a number of astonishing assertions: the Zimbabwean police had apologized for torturing an MDC MP and promised to take action against the perpetrators; those guilty of abuses in the land reform programme had been brought to book; and Mugabe had set aside a huge sum with which to compensate white farmers who had lost their land.81 None of these things was true and observers concluded that, following his normal penchant, Mbeki had drafted the letter for Obasanjo, whose grasp of Zimbabwean realities was weak.

Mbeki had assumed that if the troika did not meet Zimbabwe’s suspension would simply expire.

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