LOVE IN A TIME OF CHOLERA:
MBEKI’S RELATIONSHIP WITH ROBERT MUGABE (2000 - 2008)
By Derek Matyszak, Research and Advocacy Unit, Zimbabwe
“In his book Diplomacy, Dr Henry Kissinger discusses the place of the
issue of human rights in the East-West struggle during the Cold War. He
writes that: ‘Reagan and his advisers invoked (human rights) to try to
undermine the Soviet system.’ … It is clear that some within Zimbabwe
and elsewhere in the world, including our country, are following the
example set by ‘Reagan and his advisers’, to ‘treat human rights as a tool’
for overthrowing the government of Zimbabwe and rebuilding Zimbabwe
as they wish. In modern parlance, this is called regime change.” Thabo
Mbeki – open letter to the ANC March 2001.
Realistically, Zimbabwe will never share the same neighbourhood with the
countries of Western Europe and North America, and therefore secure its
success on the basis of friendship with these…It may be that, for whatever
reason, you [Tsvangirai] consider our region and Continent as being of
little consequence for the future of Zimbabwe, believing that others further
away, in Western Europe and North America are of greater importance.
Thabo Mbeki – letter to Morgan Tsvangirai November, 2008
The MDC has long been suspicious of any claim by Thabo Mbeki to be an honest broker
in the Zimbabwe crisis, having raised concerns in this regard from the moment South
Africa showed itself willing to endorse the fraudulent elections of 2000. Recently, calls
by the MDC for Mbeki to recuse himself as a facilitator to an accord between the parties
have grown louder. Given the track record of the Mbeki administration towards
Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe, the only cause for any surprise is that Mbeki should have
been allowed to occupy the position of facilitator at all.
Three clear policy determinations have characterised the Mbeki administration’s
approach to Zimbabwe:
a) The policy of “quiet diplomacy”, the hallmark of which was a refusal to
condemn human rights abuses and crimes against humanity perpetrated by
the Mugabe regime and its supporters, no matter how egregious. In terms
of this policy the strongest criticism ever levelled by the Mbeki
administration in relation to human rights abuses has been to call on “all
parties” to refrain from violence even when there is clear documentation
showing that the violence is perpetrated almost exclusively by ZANU PF
supporters. This approach reached its most bizarre when the call for “all
parties” to refrain from violence was repeated after the MDC leader,
Morgan Tsvangirai, along with several supporters, was brutally beaten in