Zimbabwe: UK Seeks SA Backing for Harare Sanctions
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
8 July 2008
Posted to the web 8 July 2008
Hopewell Radebe
Johannesburg
BRITISH Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday called on SA to support tougher sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government.
In a lecture at the University of SA in Pretoria, Miliband called for an end to the violence in Zimbabwe, and for the United Nations (UN) to impose further sanctions on Mugabe's Zanu (PF) regime.
Asked what types of sanctions should be brought, he said: "I think the most important sanctions are travel and financial sanctions which hit the top of the regime hard. They're the people who are profiting from the abuse and intimidation that has taken place. I think that it's right that the UN this week take tough and clear financial and travel sanctions against those people."
Miliband, in SA on a three-day visit, also called for a transitional government led by those who won the initial election on March 29. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won the first round, although its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, did not get a clear majority in the presidential poll. Tsvangirai pulled out of a runoff election on June 27, citing violence and intimidation, and Mugabe, as sole candidate, won.
Miliband also supported the expansion of the facilitation team under President Thabo Mbeki as proposed by the MDC.
He said the way forward for Zimbabwe must include a mediator appointed by the UN and the A frican Union (AU) to work with Mbeki, the Southern African Development Community's facilitator.
Miliband urged the world community to unite at the UN this week not "just to condemn violence but to initiate sanctions" on the Mugabe regime.
He said Mugabe was once a liberator who had now "turned the weapons of state against his own people" and was so determined to cling to power that "he has unleashed a campaign of unchecked brutality".
"In SA you see and pay every day the consequences of economic and political meltdown in Zimbabwe," he said, and the world should plan for the day when "Zimbabwe has a legitimate government" and needed international support.
He said the rights and wrongs of the UK's long and historical links with Zimbabwe should not prevent people from speaking clearly and frankly about the situation there today.
"Robert Mugabe's misrule does not invalidate the struggle for independence; our colonial history does not mean we cannot denounce what is wrong. The most difficult argument against promoting democracy was the notion that democracy had to be home-grown and that it was neither legitimate nor effective when promoted by outsiders."
All governments could and should do practical things to support democracy, he said. Economic depression, refugees and war spurred the creation of the European Union after the Second World War, he reminded his audience.
Relevant Links
He said the AU was one of the most important developments on this continent. In the past seven years it had played a major role in restoring peace to Burundi, and deployed peacekeeping missions in both Sudan and Somalia "while the rest of the world sat on the sidelines". With Sapa
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