Timeslive.co.za
ZOLI MANGENA
South African President Jacob Zuma’s political hand has been strengthened to deal with trouble spots in the region, mainly Zimbabwe, after Pretoria took over the presidency of the United Nations Security Council at the beginning of the month.
Photograph by: File Picture
Zuma’s leverage to tackle the political stalemate in Harare has never been so strong, seeing that he is the Southern African Development Community (SADC) facilitator in Zimbabwe and chairman of the SADC troika of the organ on politics, defence and security.
South Africa took over the presidency of the UN Security Council from Russia from January 1 until the end of the month.
Its presidency coincided with Morocco and Togo’s entrance into the council. Morocco is not a member of the African Union (AU) – it pulled out in protest over Western Sahara in 1984 to join the Arab League.
Togo and South Africa are the only AU members in the council after Nigeria and Gabon’s tenures expired last year.
South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon voted for the UN intervention in Libya, which led to Muammar Gaddafi’s murder.
The three countries were criticised by AU members for voting for the no-fly zone intervention in Libya but insisted Nato was abusing the UN Security Council 1973 resolution and mandate in pursuit of their own agendas.
Zuma criticised Nato for this when he addressed the UN Security Council late this week.
Zuma is expected to flex his political muscle with Zimbabwe during the AU summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at the end of the month.
SADC executive secretary Tomaz Salomao confirmed that Zuma would consult SADC leaders on the sidelines of the AU summit to fix dates for a regional summit on Zimbabwe.
Negotiators have finished talks and have referred certain issues to Zuma and Global Political Agreement (GPA) principals. SADC leaders say they are tired of the Zimbabwe issue which has been on their agenda for 10 years.
Zuma is permitted to organise regional troika meetings to deal with the Zimbabwe situation.
With Zimbabwe seemingly heading for elections soon, he is anxious to ensure the GPA is fully implemented and the constitution-making process is completed to create conditions for free and fair elections.
Last year during the SADC summit in Luanda in August Mugabe tried to block Zuma from assuming the troika chairmanship but failed.
Mugabe now has a chance to hit back at Zuma for his tough stance against him in GPA negotiations by backing Jean Ping’s candidacy for the chairmanship of the AU Commission ahead of South Africa’s Home Affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, although the SADC has a position to vote as a bloc for her.
South Africa is expected to prevail.
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