Iryna Chupryna October 5th, 2008

The EU-Ukraine summit in September became another defeat of Ukraine’s democracy, after the April NATO Summit in Bucharest. This summit failed to give Ukraine any clear perspective, even in the remote future. While Ukraine expected to conclude an association agreement already this year, this issue was postponed for a year. It has been rumoured that recent political turmoil in Ukraine, namely the collapse of the ruling coalition and the threat of another snap parliamentary election, contributed to the EU’s reluctance to open a door for Ukraine. But the EU fails to realize that it has enough leverage to help Ukraine on its hard way on the consolidation of democracy. Namely, in contrast to NATO integration of Ukraine, which is supported less by the half of Ukrainians, the idea of European integration is supported by a majority. So the European Union has a strong potential of unifying Ukraine, providing the unity of purpose for policy. The passive attitude of the EU to Ukraine might backfire with the setback of democracy and the growth of  Russian influence in that Eastern European state.

After the collapse of the ruling coalition in early September the situation in Ukraine remains unsettled. Even if it manages to return to the previous coalition format and to avoid new elections, the coalition between the Our Ukraine and BYuT would be very fragile, with a very slight majority over the opposition. The fact is that Ukraine is a divided country in linguistic, cultural, and socio-political aspects. It looks like the way out of the impasse for Ukraine would be a pan-Ukrainian coalition uniting pragmatic politicians of both pro-Russian and pro-Western political forces who would put aside divisive issues and focus on the economy, public administration, the fight against corruption and similar issues. A number of politicians such as Yatseniuk, Yekhanurov, Grytsenko hopefully will be able to push through a political project of that type. Arseniy Yatseniuk, parliament’s speaker, has already announced his plans to launch a new political project.

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Kurt Bassuener October 4th, 2008

Two weeks ago, I wondered at the implications of South African President Thabo Mbeki’s resignation on the continuing difficulties with the Zimbabwe power sharing deal announced last month.

Today, the BBC reports that Mbeki will retain his role as the SADC mediator:

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki has confirmed he will continue his mediation efforts in Zimbabwe.

“He will resume his work as soon as it is practically possible,” his spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said.

…

South Africa’s newly elected President Kgalema Motlanthe has given his backing to Mr Mbeki’s continuing mediation role in Zimbabwe’s power-sharing talks.

That deal remains unimplemented over disputes between Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and the Tsvangirai’s MDC over the distribution of powerful ministerial portfolios, which MDC accused the ZANU-PF of aiming to dominate. 

two senior Western diplomats in South Africa told the French news agency, AFP, that at least one Mbeki aide would travel to the Zimbabwean capital this weekend to try to push forward the talks.

“Former President Thabo Mbeki’s legal adviser Mojanku Gumbi will be in Harare this weekend… to talk to the political actors,” one diplomat said, on condition of anonymity.

It remains to be seen whether Mugabe will be moved, or will effectively welch on the deal.  African pressure will be crucial to getting the deal on track. 

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Kurt Bassuener October 4th, 2008

According to the Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs, Gov. Sarah Palin’s claim to have backed divestment from Sudan was inaccurate:

 “When I and others in the legislature found out we had some millions of dollars in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars to make sure we weren’t doing anything that would be seen as condoning the activities there in Darfur.
–Sarah Palin, Vice Presidential Debate, October 3, 2008.

“But the record shows that her administration was against the divestment movement before it was for it.” 

Read on.

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Kurt Bassuener October 4th, 2008

As Eric and I have written repeatedly individually and separately for over four years (see the publications on the topic under the DPC banner in the European Voice, Wall Street Journal Europe and the International Herald Tribune), a no-fly zone operated by NATO from bases in Chad could change the dynamic on the ground in Darfur, where Sudanese forces and their auxiliary Janjaweed militia act with impunity, backed by Sudanese airpower.  Last summer the idea had considerable momentum, being supported by both Republicans and Democrats in the race for the White House. 

Then something happened - activists who had written a book on Darfur, “A Short History of a Long War,” Alex de Waal and Julie Flint, came out hard against the idea, stating that it would lead to a cut-off in humanitarian aid and undercut attempts to reach peace, and even subvert the north-south peace deal.  These arguments were reminiscent of those made against forceful intervention in Bosnia circa 1993 and 1994.  And they worked for some years, unfortunately.  In Darfur’s case, the wind went out of the sails of the idea, and it vanished below the radar for the past year. 

The ENOUGH coalition which has worked assiduously to end the genocide didn’t propose a real alternative when it came out against no-fly, giving equal weight to the opinion of a former US Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Merrill “Tony” McPeak, who explained how it could be done, and the EU’s chief of military staff, Gen. Henri Bantegeat, a ground commander, who said it was impossible.   Instead they supported monitoring Sudanese flights and attempting to shame them.

In the intervening year, the situation in Darfur continued to deteriorate.

Last night, thanks to a question by moderator Gwen Ifill in the vice presidential debate between Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden, we now know that the no-fly zone proposal appears to have support on both tickets.  The relevant segment of the debate’s transcript can be accessed here, but below is an excerpt:

Ifill: Senator, you have quite a record, this is the next question here, of being an interventionist. You argued for intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, initially in Iraq and Pakistan and now in Darfur, putting U.S. troops on the ground. Boots on the ground. Is this something the American public has the stomach for?

Biden: Yes…I don’t have the stomach for genocide when it comes to Darfur. We can now impose a no-fly zone. It’s within our capacity. We can lead NATO if we’re willing to take a hard stand. We can; I’ve been in those camps in Chad. I’ve seen the suffering, thousands and tens of thousands have died and are dying. We should rally the world to act and demonstrate it by our own movement to provide the helicopters to get the 21,000 forces of the African Union in there now to stop this genocide.

 

Palin:  But as for as Darfur, we can agree on that also, the support of the no-fly zone, making sure that all options are on the table there also…America is in a position to help.

Biden has long been a proponent of a Darfur no-fly zone, and was passionate in last year’s Democratic debates on the issue.  He receives an A+ rating from darfurscores.org.   

Palin added that as Alaska Governor, she pressed for legislation to ensure the public sector of the state was divested of all business links to Sudan, which is laudable.

There is perhaps no more opportune time than now to press forward on the Darfur no-fly proposal, given that the UN/AU Mission in Darfur’s (UNAMID’s) aircraft have come under fire by rebels who believe they are Sudanese aircraft, which are also painted white to mimic the UN and humanitarian aircraft.  Not only has this increased the danger for UN/AU forces, but it has restricted aid distribution:

Aid groups said any further attacks on aircraft in Darfur could have a devastating impact on their work.

“No one wants to use the roads because they keep being shot at,” said Alun McDonald, spokesman for Oxfam in Sudan. “If they are starting to shoot at helicopters now, that doesn’t leave us with many options.”

And what was a major reason Ms. Flint, Mr. de Waal, and many humanitarian aid organizations resisted the no-fly zone?  Humanitarian access… The other main reason - space for peace talks - has also proven empty.  Nothing of consequence has been agreed, and no such agreement is on the horizon, as Bashir sees no reason to relent.  He has bent the international community to his will in a way that would make Milosevic jealous.

I hope that Senators Obama and McCain will follow the lead of their running mates and return to advocating the Darfur no-fly zone.  For if they both do so, then the necessary European - particularly French, as they have the bases needed to mount an air operation with fighter aircraft - cooperation needed can finally start to be mobilized.

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Kurt Bassuener October 3rd, 2008

Soon after Eric posted the link below to the excellent Joshua Kurlantzick article, “Monster’s Ball,” the two of us discussed some of the themes therein.  The reliance on particular leaders seems a constant and repeated error throughout American statecraft, nearly always ending in tears.

One factor seems very clear to me - that the Bush administration was far more concerned with having talking points to buttress the assertion that “freedom (was) on the march,” even before his second inaugural address, than it was with the adherence to democratic principles. Furthermore, it conflates “democratic” with “pro-Western,” or “pro-American,” and these don’t always go hand in hand.  And when a regime is undemocratic and aligned with the US, it’s a safe bet the population will rightly see the US as complicit in their oppression.  The primary concern, despite all discussion of the paradigm shift away from backing “our SOBs” that came with Bush’s 2003 NED address, has been to have governments aligned with the US.

Post-Rose Revolutionary Georgia in particular came at an opportune time for the Bush administration, which was scrambling to find another rationale for the invasion of Iraq.  So the Saakashvili administration and the Bush administration were in a symbiosis, with Washington not wanting to point to Georgia’s increasing bellicosity or democratic transgressions, both of which might have been reined-in with a bit of friendly pressure early on.  The fact that they were not helped lead to the debacle of August’s “five day war” with Russia, which saw the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia leave Georgia’s orbit - even before the war legally Georgian territory but not under physical control - probably for good.  But Bush was happy to adopt and keep Georgia as a poster child - never mind the more complicated reality.  Georgia of course deserved support, but not uncritical support.

Yet the sorts of blatant hypocritical mistakes that gutted the credibility of the “freedom agenda” from the start were, as Kurlantzick notes, the relationships with such “friendly dictators” as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, recipient of $2 billion a year in guaranteed aid.  That massive potential US leverage has never been employed to press Mubarak’s brutal and sclerotic regime to open up, and is the subject of a fascinating new book, Inside Egypt - The Land of the Pharoahs on the Brink of a Revolution, by John R. Bradley (recently banned in Egypt, natch).

Near the close of his angry book, Bradley cites the bizarre position of Egypt’s beleagured liberal democrats with a recounting of the experience of Hisham Kassem, winner of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Democracy Award a year ago:

These conflicting goals (democracy and transparency along with stability) were captured in the rather bizarre experience of one Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian human rights activist who, in October 2007, was one of four international activists given the prestigious Democracy Award of the National Endowment for Democracy.  Kassem found the experience woefully depressing. “To see the president of the United States in person and his more or less lack of interest in what is happening politically in Egypt left me without any doubt that this whole [democracy] program was over,” he told Reuters after collecting his award.  Kassem said that although the president asked about reformers in the ruling NDP (to which he replied “Sorry, there are no reformers in the NDP”), Bush was mainly interested in the position of Islamists in Egypt.  Kassem made clear that the government had made it impossible for secular movements to operate, leaving the field open to the Islamists: “There is no alternative now for the people, given that that Islamists operate out of mosques while secular parties are not allowed to operate at all.” With the difficult economic situation, he added, “I am worried Egypt will become a theocracy by 2010.” Apparently that comment finally got Bush’s full attention, and he seemed rather perplexed that American policy was not working, noting: “We give your country $2 billion a year in order to keep it stable and prevent it from turning into a theocracy.”  He looked, Kassem said, quite dismayed.

Some would argue Kassem did himself no favors in meeting with Bush and his top advisors.  For the unfortunate reality is that the American push for democracy is now perceived as having been insincere at best, hypocritical at worst.  Which is hardly surprising, when for the president the purpose of the payoff to Mubarak’s regime is stability rather than reform.

Bradley further quotes another Egyptian human rights activist, Ahmed Said al-Islam, as saying:

The war on terror is undermining democracy advocates and strengthening Arab dictatorships…The latter are using it to put off reforms and arguing that being pro-reform means siding with the enemies of the state.

American credibility in democracy promotion is so denuded after the Bush years that respected Carnegie Endowment scholar Tom Carothers says it needs to be ”decontaminated” to regain credibility in a new administration.  Harsh words, but apropos, I believe. 

The US, having beat the democracy drum so loudly, is front and center in being cited for hypocrisy, but sadly not alone. In the case of Egypt, French President Sarkozy asked Mubarak to co-chair the Mediterranean Union summit last summer - though it’s fair to note that none of the potential members from the southern littoral of the Mediterranean really fits the bill as a democracy.  The larger point to be made is that the democratic world has no clear strategy to employ the leverage it has to promote its values.  The US and EU remain divided on democracy support largely because the Bush administration has shot its credibility on the subject.

No matter what the result of the US presidential election, the bottom line is that the EU and the US have to collaborate in that endeavor if it is to bear fruit and help reverse authoriarian capitalism’s increasing appeal.

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Eric Witte October 2nd, 2008

Writing for The New Republic, Joshua Kurlantzick has a thoughtful article on a series of setbacks for democratization over the past few years, as has been documented by Freedom House.  In part Kurlantzick attributes backsliding and lack of progress in Central Asia, Africa, Latin America and East Asia to the Bush administration’s selling of the Iraq war under the banner of “democratization” (which gained prominence once weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize) and to the administration’s naked hypocrisy in dealing with countries from Azerbaijan to Equatorial Guinea:

As members of the Bush administration eye their legacies, they can be sure that their embrace of democratization has tarnished the very idea. In a 2006 report on the backlash against democracy, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, which funds democracy promotion around the world, admitted that some of its grantees overseas did not want to meet with NED program officers for fear of being tainted by association. The Iraq war, which was rationalized as an exercise in democratization, has also inspired new faith in authoritarian rule by linking the idea of democracy with the chaos in Baghdad. “What happened in Iraq makes the entire region afraid,” Haitham Maleh, a former president of the Committee for Human Rights in Syria, told Salon.com. “People don’t want to risk foreign occupation, chaos, and sectarian bloodshed.”

Worse, the administration has not even stuck by its guns. After having earlier emboldened some Middle Eastern democrats with promises of a “freedom agenda,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on her most recent trip to the region, barely mentioned the word “democracy.” At times, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to assist autocrats, aiding the Ethiopian regime over the past three years in exchange for promises to help fight terrorism in Somalia and welcoming the leader of Azerbaijan at the White House after he rigged a national poll. The administration has even embraced leaders like Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has been accused of abhorrent crimes, overseeing a regime under which political opponents are tortured, starved, and raped (Obiang himself has even been accused of eating the body parts of rivals). Still, in April 2006, Rice met Obiang at Foggy Bottom and–no doubt aware that Equatorial Guinea is becoming one of the largest oil exporters in West Africa–told him, “You are a good friend, and we welcome you.”

Beyond American policy failures, Kurlantzick also attributes democratic backsliding to the weakness of new democratic governments and the increasing savvy of authoritarian leaders.  China and Russia, alarmed by the color revolutions, are now offering training to authoritarians around the world in how to resist and co-opt democratic opposition.  The whole sobering article is must reading.

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Eric Witte October 1st, 2008

Following the August 6 coup in Mauritania, the United States, World Bank, and European Union announced the suspension of non-humanitarian aid to the Sahelian country.  As I noted at the time, while this was welcome, the real leverage came with lucrative international fishing and mining deals in Mauritania.  It was encouraging then, when a spokesperson for EU Aid and Development Commissioner Louis Michel stated in late August that Michel would request suspension of a fishing arrangement worth approximately €75 million per year “until there is a resolution to the situation”.

In mid-September it appeared that EU and French resolve in facing down the Mauritanian junta could be wavering.  Now it appears that it has caved altogether.  Following a meeting of EU fisheries ministers this Monday and Tuesday, the French EU presidency issued a statement that was cryptic on the Mauritanian issue.  It stated that the Agricultural and Fisheries Council “authorised the Commission to proceed with the payment of the funds provided for by the EU-Mauritania fishing agreement, provided that all the requisite conditions have been met.”  Requisite conditions, meaning restoration of the democratic order?  It turns out that the conditions are nothing of the sort:

For the moment, the European Commission — which regulates EU fishing policy — has decided to suspend the payment.

Under the terms of the agreement, once Mauritania has notified Brussels of the funds’ non-arrival, the Commission has 30 working days to transfer its payment. If it doesn’t do that in time, Mauritania gains the right to suspend the whole deal.

That 30-day period runs out on Oct. 15.

“We are making use of the time we have to ascertain that the terms of the agreement concerning the uses of the money that we give to Mauritania will be adhered to and be respected, before we effect the payment,” EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg said.

“If we have confirmation from Mauritania that they respect the terms of the agreement, then payment will be effected within the deadline,” he said in an interview. “But we need confirmation that what was agreed with the previous government will be respected.”

So as long as the illegitimate junta fulfills technical terms agreed by the democratically elected government, it can enjoy the economic benefits of the deal.  Either the EU position has significantly weakened since the Aid and Development Commissioner’s demand was for “a resolution to the situation”, or those were just weasel words to begin with. 

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Eric Witte September 25th, 2008

Local elections will be held in Bosnia next month, and election season means that although a majority of Bosnians rate their top concerns as jobs and other bread-and-butter issues, their political class again is feeding them a steady diet of ethnic fear-mongering.  Nationalist politicians are literally scaring-up votes, and will, as always, be rewarded for it at the polls.  It’s a feature, not a bug of the Dayton constitution, which itself was designed by nationalist leaders of all three main ethnicities to suit their interests.   The dynamic will remain this way until officeholders are no longer elected from constituencies largely defined as mono-ethnic.  Mutual communal fear provides the best chances for Bosniak, Croat, and Serb nationalists to win under these circumstances, so they have a common vested interest in stoking it.

In typical fashion, Tuesday saw Haris Silajdzic, the Bosniak member of the country’s ridiculous tripartite, tri-ethnic presidency, addressing the UN General Assembly, where in thinly veiled terms he called on the world body to abolish the Republika Srpska (Bosnia’s Serb-dominated half).  While I share Silajdzic’s view that the RS was born of genocide, ending what Silajdzic termed “ethnic apartheid” will require political compromise with Serbs and Croats.  It cannot be done with fist-pounding demands to undo history.  Under the logic of Dayton politics, these only provide more fodder for Serb nationalist politicians, whose fierce reactions will scare more Bosniak voters to Silajdzic.

Miroslav Lajcak, the international community’s High Representative and EU Special Representative for Bosnia, made just this reasonable argument to the largely Bosniak readership of a Sarajevo daily yesterday: “You cannot state that you are pro Bosnia-Herzegovina, while treating one half of the country as hostile.”  So far, so good.  However, Lajcak went on to raise the specter that unless this changed, Bosnia could go the way of Czechoslovakia and Serbia-Montenegro:

“I have seen the same atmosphere that I see today in the Sarajevo-Banja Luka relations twice in my life. I saw it first in the Bratislava-Prague relations, and then in those between Podgorica and Belgrade, and we all know how that turned out.”

This would not be a bad message for Bosniak politicians behind closed doors, but uttered for the media has only encouraged RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik’s hope for his entity’s secession.  So rather than amplify the message that Bosniaks need to think about a future Bosnia that assuages the political fears - and indeed, meets the political needs - of other communities, Lajcak has actually contributed to the tedious, inflammatory campaign debate on RS secession vs. RS-abolition.

In the same interview Lajcak repeated the tired mantra that Bosnia’s politicians need to lead the way out of the crisis: “The international community, especially the EU, expects that 13 years after the war, Bosnia-Herzegovina should take matters into its own hands.”  This expectation completely ignores the rewarding of nationalist candidacies ingrained in the Bosnian election system.  Thirteen years after Dayton, the people of Bosnia might expect the EU and the broader international community to understand that if a new political compromise is to be achieved, the impetus will never come from Bosnian politicians whose interests are tethered to the status quo.  The EU, whose mission soon will be leading the international presence in Bosnia, has yet to demonstrate that it has any workable strategy to address the constitutional crux of Bosnia’s problems.  Worse, it often appears that the EU doesn’t even understand the problem.

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Kurt Bassuener September 23rd, 2008

Iryna Chupryna wrote an insightful analysis of the political situation on Ukraine as an issue of DPC Analyst, posted today.  The collapse of the “Orange” coalition of President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko seems destined to lead to new parliamentary elections - the third in three years, as Iryna noted.  Ukrainian voters, especially those who had high hopes from the victory of December 2004, are beginning to despair; many are tuning out of politics altogether.  Given the fact that the election results will probably not deliver a fundamental change to political order, but merely reshuffle the existing deck, it is easy to sympathize with their frustration.  Only Ukrainians, primarily in the east and south of the country, who voted for the Party of Regions, headed by Viktor Yanukovych, do not feel disappointed or let down by their leaders, and they form the largest single bloc.  Given the fact that Yanukovych not only conspired with President Kuchma and his chief of staff Viktor Medvedchuk (with considerable assistance from Vladimir Putin and now-President Dmitri Medvedev) to steal the 2004 election, this is a nearly incomprehensible result.  But it is nonetheless true.  What was won in the cold streets of Kyiv’s Maidan in November and December seems to have been mortally wounded through infighting, ego battles, and and unwillingness to put the public interest first.

No one side in the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko conflict is solely guilty.  My own view is to have more disappointment in Yushchenko, since I expected better from him, while Yulia Tymoshenko’s brand of populism proved to be a double-edged sword, but a known one throughout.  The pairing was absolutely essential during the presidential campaign after Yushchenko was poisoned, with Tymoshenko taking on the heavy travel schedule that the Yushchenko campaign planned to circumvent the media blockade against it until Yushchenko could return.  Tymoshenko was also very insistent on the monitoring the vote count.  She was a crowd-pleaser on the Maidan, and judging from the reception on New Year’s 2005 (where Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who once studied in Kyiv and speaks fluent Ukrainian, also spoke) at the Maidan, the bigger star. 

The coalition was difficult from the start, given so many egos and interests to balance.  Even from Spring 2005, it appeared that Yushchenko didn’t have a strong enough grip on his administration and government.  And it went downhill from there.

What didn’t happen, but must if Ukraine is to prosper and progress toward integration with the EU (a door which still remains closed for the moment, unfortunately - the EU has enormous capacity to use conditions for membership to spur the necessary reforms to Ukraine’s still sclerotic governance and administration) is some effort to bridge the east-west divide in Ukrainian politics.  This divide began to be ameliorated during Kuchma’s presidency, and the great perversity of his attempt to retain power vicariously was that he was willing to scuttle his greatest achievment as president for a decade - an otherwise increasingly corrupt and sordid reign.  Nonetheless, due to the combined factors of incoherence in the ruling coalition, the fact that the Party of Regions is still led by the polarizing Viktor Yanukovych, an increasingly polarized international political situation and a lack of EU strategy toward Ukraine, the country remains split essentially along the lines of the 2004 election.

There was talk when I was in Ukraine a year ago, before parliamentary elections, that sub rosa efforts were ongoing to hive off the main body of the Party of Regions under Donetsk-based tycoon Rinat Akhmetov, and then forging a Our Ukraine coalition with this party, leaving a rump PoR and the Tymoshenko Bloc out of power.  Odd as it sounds, many “Orange” veterans were in favor of such a coalition, for only an easterner could sell NATO membership the the south and east, but generally for the potential to knit the country back together behind a common agenda to pursue EU membership.

It remains to be seen what that United Center party will accomplish, but it is hard to see a way out of the current impasse without new players and new ideas.

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Eric Witte September 22nd, 2008

Yesterday, Kurt wondered how Thabo Mbeki’s resignation as South African president would affect the tenuous power-sharing agreement in neighboring Zimbabwe.   Today we learn that the African National Congress has chosen party deputy Kgalema Motlanthe to serve out the rest of Mbeki’s term, until elections due next April. 

Motlanthe appears to be more than a mere place-holder for ANC leader Jacob Zuma, who is widely tipped to win the coming presidential elections.  Zuma’s faction of the ANC is reported to have favored the current Speaker of Parliament Baleka Mbete for the post of caretaker president and may be disappointed that she was passed over.  Motlanthe is regarded as a party moderate who has tried to be a peacemaker between the Mbeki and Zuma factions.

For years Mbeki has been notoriously soft on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, even as Zimbabwe’s economic implosion has been a drag on the South African economy.  Rival Jacob Zuma, with a background in the labor movement, has shown greater sympathy to Zimbabwe’s current prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, himself a union activist and the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change.  Kgalema Motlanthe also has a labor background, having served as the secretary general of South Africa’s mineworkers union. What do we know about his views on Zimbabwe?  A cursory search reveals the following:

• In 2000, Motlanthe penned a newspaper article in defense of Mugabe’s land redistribution policies, prompting Morgan Tsvangirai to complain: “The ANC’s endorsement of Zanu-PF is counter-productive.  We would have hoped they would have done all in their power to back a free and fair election.”
• Last year, when UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was threatening to boycott the planned summit between African Union and European Union leaders, Motlanthe argued that the summit should proceed without London and not be “imprisoned and paralysed by dangerous and destructive neo-colonialist ambitions”.
• Motlanthe was one of the South African officials who participated in July talks with the parties in Zimbabwe, pressuring both sides to compromise.

With regard to Zimbabwe, at first glance it appears that South Africa’s new president may be much like its last.

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