Each day brings a fresh sign of misery in Zimbabwe. Yet South Africa, Zimbabwe's prosperous and stable neighbor to the south, has done little to defuse the situation despite having the most to lose if Zimbabwe descends into chaos.
Last week, President Robert Mugabe's government decreed it a crime to carry large wads of cash -- a bid to control the hoarding of money in a country where the inflation rate has reached 300 percent. This week, the government outlawed carrying gasoline in containers as the supply of fuel dwindles.
Mugabe's violent program of land reform has taken a toll on the country's ability to feed itself. This month, the World Food Program announced that 5.5 million people in Zimbabwe will need extra food in order to avoid starvation. Opposition leaders who just last year ran for office are now being jailed.
In an Op-Ed article published on Tuesday in The New York Times condemning Mugabe's increasingly autocratic rule, US Secretary of State Colin Powell urged South Africa to take a more active role in brokering a deal to end Mugabe's 23-year rule of Zimbabwe.
But if its recent actions toward Zimbabwe -- or lack thereof -- are any guide, Pretoria is unlikely to intervene in any significant way in the looming crisis.
South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, has staked his legacy on bringing Africa fully into the global community, seeking to build prosperity across the continent through free market democracy with a distinctly African flavor.
Yet he has done little to press Mugabe -- one of Africa's last strongmen -- to follow those policies. Since a visit to Harare in May failed to produce a solution, Mbeki has been largely silent, engaging in quiet and polite diplomacy, predicting that a solution to the crisis will somehow emerge within a year.
A complex array of domestic and foreign concerns explain his reluctance to confront a man much of the rest of the world condemns as a tyrant, political experts here and in Zimbabwe said. Fundamentally, Mbeki seems unable to decide just what South Africa's role in the region should be.
At home, Mbeki faces his own land reform issues -- much of the nation's best tracts of land are still owned by a tiny, wealthy white minority, and Mbeki has pledged to come up with a plan to distribute land more equitably.
As an ardent advocate of free-markets, Mbeki would never condone Mugabe's radical and violent land reform program, but he is under considerable pressure from his own party, the African National Congress, to take action.
A spokesman for South Africa's foreign ministry said that Mbeki is doing precisely what Powell asks: trying to help Zimbabwe find a solution.
"The solution to the current challenge in Zimbabwe lies with the people of Zimbabwe," said Ronnie Mamoepa, spokesman for the foreign ministry.
"There are well known, ongoing efforts by the regional leadership to assist the people of Zimbabwe to begin to address the challenges that face them with a view to national reconciliation," he said.
Among Zimbabwe's ruling party, reaction to Powell's statements was swift and blunt.
"It is quite inadvisable for Powell to tell us who will rule Zimbabwe," said George Charamba, Mugabe's chief spokesman. "It is not his business."
This has been Mugabe's message all along, and his ultimate weapon against Mbeki: anyone who questions his legitimacy is an imperialist who would give Zimbabwe back to its colonial masters. John Stremlau, a professor of international relations at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said Mbeki, mindful of the power of such claims, has quietly sought a solution to the crisis that would both preserve Mugabe's dignity and legacy while effecting a change in leadership.
"Mbeki has managed this crisis with an eye to his own constituency. It is very easy to carp about it from Washington, but it is very different when you are dealing with a powerful and important neighbor," Stremlau said.
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