What role does the South African political leadership, especially Thabo Mbeki, play with regard to the Mugabe regime?
One might have thought that the establishment of democratic norms in post-apartheid South Africa might spill over into Zimbabwe. Thabo Mbeki has played a large role in Zimbabwe’s political crisis, and I am afraid to say that that role had been chiefly negative. If he had (at the very least) kept his hands off the Zimbabwean crisis from the beginning, it is my belief that the country would not have been in as bad a situation as it is now. He has wasted years for the Zimbabwean population, pretending to be working for peace in Zimbabwe, when all he was concerned with was the welfare of Mugabe and his ZANU PF colleagues. Mbeki’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” towards Mugabe, seen now in its fading days, seems to be nothing more than a protective cocoon for the dictatorship in Zimbabwe. It allowed Mbeki to absorb all the pressure directed at Mugabe, giving that dictator the space and opportunity to unleash extreme violence against his own people. The last two words that the world heard from M
