Zimbabwean author Peter Godwin, in an op-ed piece in today's New York Times entitled "Showing Mugabe the Door," says that Mbeki's quiet diplomacy is "nothing more than the appeasement of a violent dictator."
And how right he is.
He point out how ZImbabwe has become a function of South African domestic politics:
"It has long been a political parlor game to figure out why Mr. Mbeki hasn’t done more about Zimbabwe. He sometimes pays lip service to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign state, but South Africa quickly sent its army into Lesotho in 1998 after a rigged election there. Part of Mr. Mbeki’s reluctance to act may have to do with Mr. Mugabe’s residual status as a liberation hero. But mostly, I believe, it stems from Mr. Mbeki’s distaste for the Zimbabwean opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change and its main leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who used to head up the Zimbabwean trades union movement.
Therein lies the problem: Mr. Mbeki’s ruling African National Congress party is actually a troika, and one of its legs is the Congress of South African Trade Union, which is getting increasingly fractious. The group has strongly backed Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change, and if Mr. Tsvangirai were to come to power in Zimbabwe, it would greatly embolden the South African union confederation, encouraging it to secede from the African National Congress and pose a challenge to Mr. Mbeki. Thus has Zimbabwe become a function of South African domestic politics."
