“No one said anything to me. They may have done so in the corridors or away from us. They may have had some unkind words to say about our approach”.
President Ian Khama betrayed the underlying “us” and “them” regional tensions during an interview with international journalist Nicholas Norbrook.
By “they” Khama was probably referring to South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma and other regional leaders who favor a softly-softly approach to the Robert Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
By “our approach”, he was referring to Botswana’s tough stance against the Zimbabwean President.
Both Khama and Zuma’s credentials as international statesmen have been shaped by the Zimbabwean crisis with each president taking the opposite end of the rope in the enduring tug-of-war.
Khama arrived at the Office of the President when Mugabe seemed to be riding rough shod over SADC leaders. The President of Botswana is credited with putting the backbone into the opposition against the Mugabe regime.
Hardly a week at the Office of the President, Khama got hold of the late Zimbabwean president, Levi Mwanawasa, who was then SADC Chairman, and simply said, “Botswana has a problem.”
The result was a hastily-called extraordinary SADC summit in Lusaka, where the Zimbabwean issue was the primary item on the agenda. For the first time at SADC, heads of state and government were meeting to discuss the intransigence of one of their own. Khama earned his stripes as Southern Africa’s champion of democracy.?South Africa’s Jacob Zuma on the other hand inherited the position of SADC Chairperson when he took over the presidency from Thabo Mbeki. The new SADC chair immediately made his foreign policy priorities clear, placing emphasis on the region. His visit to Zimbabwe came soon after his first foreign tour, to oil-rich Angola, one of Mugabe’s closest allies.
Even before he was sworn in as President of South Africa, Zuma had already defined his role in the Zimbabwean crisis as the peacemaker. While Khama and other western leaders were marshalling efforts to end Zimbabwe’s misery by forcing Mugabe out, Zuma urged further mediation despite the power-sharing impasse in Harare. As President Sarkozy of France called for a swift end to the Mugabe regime, Zuma, then head of South Africa’s ruling ANC party, insisted that dialogue was still the best way forward.
“President Mugabe must go,” Mr Sarkozy said in an address in Paris to The Elders, an independent group of statesmen and women who were recently refused visas to travel to Zimbabwe. His call followed similar demands from Botswana, Britain and the US, as well as Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Prime Minister.
Zuma, who would be elected South Africa’s president the following year, offered a radically different solution. “We need some swift action to deal with the situation.” he said at the opening of talks in Windhoek with President Pohamba of Namibia. “We fully support Thabo Mbeki’s mediation efforts and we urge the Zimbabwe leadership to act and … pave the way for a unity government.”
It was hoped that Zuma, who at the time that Mbeki was being pushed out of office was highly critical of Mugabe, would take a strong stance as the new mediator. With Zuma emerging as the new regional peacemaker and Khama cheered on as the region’s champion of democracy, it was difficult, at times, to tell how much of their campaigns were in the service of the resolution of the Zimbabwean crisis and how much was in the service of their legacies.
While the international community was stepping up sanctions against the Mugabe regime, there was fear that the Zimbabwean president would develop a siege mentality. Zuma’s legacy as regional peacemaker was in jeopardy. It thus came as no surprise to most Zuma watchers when the new South African president followed a path of appeasement, putting more energy into lobbying for the targeted sanctions against ZANU PF to be lifted, than forcing Mugabe to share power with the MDC.
Mugabe had reneged from a power-sharing deal with Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, giving the Opposition just one ministry in the so-called unity Government. With Zuma pushing the unity government talks on track, this seemed to rob Khama of his course.
While Zuma was urging everyone to give the peace talks a chance, Khama, Africa’s most vocal critic of Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party, said in a State of the Nation address that new elections would end the political feuding that has handicapped the unity government in Harare.?”I must here, however, express concern at the continued failure of Zanu-PF to fully honour the spirit of the power-sharing agreement,” Khama said.?”In the absence of genuine partnership it would be better for all parties to go back to the people, for they are the ultimate authority to determine who should form the government of Zimbabwe.”?”There can be no substitution for free, fair and credible elections, where people in any country should be allowed to elect representatives of their choice,” Khama said, in his first state of the nation since winning last month’s general elections.
The regional tension was not helped by South African ruling ANC Youth League President Julius Malema’s rock-star-like visit to Zimbabwe. Some ANC members were concerned at the timing of the trip, which came in the middle of Zuma’s bid to broker a political settlement in Harare.?“President Zuma has no problem with my trip. When I left the meeting (he met Zuma shortly before he left for Zimbabwe) he asked me to pass his greetings to his comrade, President Mugabe,” Malema told the South African media. ?At a mass rally in Mbare, a township south of Harare, Malema basked in the limelight wearing a shirt emblazoned with Mugabe’s image. His delegation all wore the praise shirts which are an important political symbol for Mugabe. He also visited farms confiscated from white land-owners and mines which have been nationalised.
The youth league delegation did not meet the opposition Movement for Democratic Change because it was not a liberation movement, said Malema. “Who is the MDC? They enjoy the comfort of South Africa and from their luxurious, air-conditioned offices in Sandton they insult us.” Although Zuma subsequently rapped Malema on the knuckles most political commentators felt it was just an empty gesture to save the peace talks.?A few weeks later, President Khama who is believed to be sympathetic to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) launched a scathing attack on Malema accusing him of of jeopardizing reconciliation efforts in Zimbabwe.
“Malema’s foot-in-the-mouth gaffes have jeopardized President Jacob Zuma’s reconciliation efforts in Zimbabwe, for a long time he was out of order but the ANC failed to discipline him, instead he was treated with kid gloves, glorified as a revolutionary and allowed to spiral out of control,” said Khama.
Khama’s attack on Malema is also feared to have poisoned the relationship between Zuma’s African National Congress and Khama’s Botswana Democratic Party.?When the two presidents meet in Pretoria today (Tuesday) the Zimbabwean issue which has poisoned a huge swathe of their relationship is expected to be a large elephant in the living room that no one would want to talk about.
Discussing the Zimbabwean issue with a visiting journalist, Khama told him that, “certainly in my interaction with other countries who didn’t share our approach, it never came up ÔÇô anyway, no one said anything to me. They may have done so in the corridors or away from us. They may have had some unkind words to say about our approach. But certainly some countries always preferred quiet diplomacy. I have a good relationship with their leaders.” The two presidents are likely to keep it that way. Any discussion beyond lip service is expected to degenerate into a clash of egos. Khama and Zuma are expected to stick to benign issues of bilateral cooperation and praising each other for strides they are making in developing democracy and their economies.
