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Leaders criticize S African policy

South African trade unions and church leaders have called their government's response to unrest in Zimbabwe shameful, while a US envoy urged all Zimbabwe's neighbors to do more to rein in Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

While leaders across the world including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the UN and the EU had strong denunciations of the Zimbabwean government, accused of brutally cracking down on dissenters this week, regional power center South Africa maintained that Zimbabwe's problems could only be resolved by Zimbabweans.

In a statement, South African Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad urged the Zimbabwean government to ensure respect for the rule of law and the opposition to "work towards a climate that is conducive to finding a lasting solution to the current challenges faced by the people of Zimbabwe."

The Congress of South African Trade Unions said it deplored the government's "shamefully weak response."

"Such a response is disgraceful, in the face of such massive attacks on democracy and human rights, especially coming from those who owed so much to international solidarity when South Africans were fighting for democracy and human rights against the apartheid regime," the country's largest federation of trade unions said in a statement.

South Africa has pursued what it calls a policy of "quiet diplomacy," arguing working behind the scenes would do more to encourage reform in Zimbabwe than isolating its president, Mugabe. Now concerns are being raised that South Africa's silence has added to Zimbabwe's woes and is tarnishing South Africa's image as a beacon of human rights.

"The silence of the South African government is aggravating the situation. Our leaders must show that they are committed to helping the people of Zimbabwe to find rapid solutions to the many problems confronting them," the South African Council of Churches said.

Eddie Makue, the organization's general-secretary, said in a statement that the situation in Zimbabwe threatened to destabilize the region.

"One would hope that in the glaring light of the growing brutality of the Zimbabwean government those [neighboring] states would finally feel moved to act," US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell told the BBC on Tuesday.

South African Foreign Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said calls for the government to condemn Zimbabwe were misplaced while contact between the two governments continued.

But Steven Friedman, a researcher at Idasa, a pro-democracy think tank, said there was a sense South Africa was concerned about not being seen to be siding with white farmers against a black government and giving the opposition any undue credibility, than it was in "defending people's rights to protest, which is a basic right enshrined in our Constitution."

Friedman said South Africa was damaging its reputation as a country with a strong record on human rights issues.

"What the government fails to understand is that we are not a very large country so the extent to which we have any leverage in the world arena comes from our past," he said.

"A consistent human rights approach is our greatest asset and we are busy squandering it and this is particularly true with regard to Zimbabwe," Friedman said.
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