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ANC’s Jacob Zuma |
By vision reporter
Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa’s ruling party The African National Congress (ANC), has defended his country’s quiet diplomacy in dealing with the crisis in Zimbabwe.
“What else has worked in Zimbabwe? There is nothing that has worked! So it can’t be fair to criticise silent diplomacy and not criticise everything else that has not worked,” he told Sunday Vision in an exclusive interview.
The decision not to criticise Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe in public was prompted by the fact that the Zimbabwean situation has a direct impact on South Africa,” he explained.
“We have an estimated three to four million Zimbabweans in South Africa… Our view is that instead of criticising, we should engage the Zimbabweans, both sides, ZANU-PF and MDC. If you are to engage them, you don’t want to antagonise them.”
He said the international community was exaggerating the situation in Zimbabwe. “People exaggerate Zimbabwe. We have had problems in the continent, but the world does not raise the alarm as it has done in Zimbabwe. We had millions dying in Angola, Congo, Rwanda and Burundi but no one said the sky must fall.”
The ANC leader recalled a meeting with Mugabe where the latter accused US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of double standards.
“He (Mugabe) said: These two are hypocrites. While criticising me, they are embracing the leader of Pakistan, a military man who staged a coup against his government. He is their friend, yet, he has no constitution,” Zuma quoted Mugabe as saying.
He added that he had no answer to those accusations and urged world leaders not to single out Zimbabwe.
Zuma’s utterances seem to contradict earlier statements where he raised the alarm over the deteriorating political situation in Zimbabwe.
In a speech last month, he called the situation “out of control” and said his party could not agree with Zimbabwe’s ruling party on democratic values. “We cannot agree with Zanu-PF. We cannot agree with them on values. We fought for the right of people to vote, we fought for democracy,” Zuma said, while addressing the International Investment Conference in Johannesburg on June 24.
“We are deeply dismayed by the actions of the government of Zimbabwe, which is riding roughshod over the hard-won democratic rights of the people of that country,” his party, the ANC, said in a statement the same day.
“We cannot remain indifferent to the flagrant violation of every principle of democratic governance.”
On the xenophobic violence which gripped South Africa in May, Zuma said during the interview that there was no hatred against foreigners in South Africa. Instead, he blamed the attacks in the townships, which left more than 60 people dead, on criminal elements.
“The community leaders had moved from door to door to find out, is there xenophobia? And the answer was no. Everybody in Mamelodi said there was no xenophobia. Their own investigation was that these were criminals who instigated this because they wanted to commit crime.”
See full interview on our Interview section
Published on: Saturday, 19th July, 2008
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