Zuma backs mediation in Zimbabwe

While aid agencies are confirming that thousands of unreported Zimbabwean deaths are taking place as a result of the collapse of the country’s healthcare in tandem with a breakdown of communications, the Times of London are leading with ANC president Jacob Zuma’s view that mediation offers the best solution to the current crisis.

This comes at a time when the international call to bring Mugabe’s rule to an end is intensifying daily.

Zuma concedes that there is an urgent need for the crisis to be brought to a head but suggests that mediation by former president Thabo Mbeki offers the quickest solution to the problem.

In light of the fact that Mugabe has showed no intention of breaking the deadlock by conceding any ground to the MDC and that South Africa’s policies in the past have played a major role in bringing Zimbabwe to this humanitarian crisis this approach is, at best, perplexing.

Zimbabwe’s dictator Robert Mugabe in the meantime is suggesting that Britain is using the cholera epidemic, the latest Zanu-PF gift to Zimbabwe and the region, or is that anthrax? (I forget), as a basis to rally Western support for an invasion.

This brings back memories of a similar approach by another African leader who suggested that using antiretrovirals was a scam by western pharmaceutical companies. We’re still counting the bodies from that disaster.

While we adore looking after four million Zimbabwean refugees at a cost of tens of billions to our country, watching five million more at risk of starving to death and that country becoming a breeding ground for deadly diseases, which it exports to the region, sadly all good things must come to an end.

At what point would the ANC president suggest that we accept failure in Zimbabwe and allow the international community to bail us out?

Often I get readers asking me why South Africa has pursued an avenue, which we knew was detrimental to Zimbabwe, South Africa and the region, in order to prop up a genocidal dictator. Unfortunately as much as I wrack my brains I cannot find one compelling reason for our support of Mugabe on this scale.

On any calculation his continued presence sucks out billions of rand we should be using for our masses, occasions xenophobia with refugees resulting in too few resources being chased by too many people, ensures the death of Zimbabweans in huge numbers and triggers deadly diseases being loosed upon the region. Why are we actually doing it?

While I can understand payback for support against apartheid, this too seems illogical because the black people who follow the MDC — the vast majority — were just as supportive of the ANC as those who followed the Zanu-PF at that time. If you think about it, many were probably Zanu-PF supporters until Senor Satan went genocidal. Moreover, it was Zimbabwe not Mugabe who supported the ANC, unless you’re suggesting that he funded the assistance out of his own pocket.

Western imperialism? You couldn’t force Western governments to re-colonise Africa; they’d run a mile.

If South Africa’s foreign affairs “dream team” are intending to stymie moves by the AU or UN to finally intervene, if this should materialise, then we must call on our mediator to explain the rationale behind Zimbabwe. Why we support retaining Mugabe who has occasioned the collapse of a country whose meltdown threatens the entire region and which blocks the EU’s bailout package, which is waiting for the duly elected government of that country.

Right now I’d settle for Zuma’s explanation on why we are forcing Zimbabweans to accept a mediator they have clearly rejected on grounds of bias.

Don’t hold your breath.