Posted on 07/10/2004 8:50:01 PM PDT by Ironfocus
Zimbabwe's ruling party asks ANC for help with election at secret meeting
TOP ANC officials led by President Thabo Mbeki recently held a top-secret meeting with leading members of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF to forge closer political ties.
The June meeting was confirmed yesterday by ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe and Zanu-PF's chairman, John Nkomo.
The meeting took place at the ANC's headquarters in central Johannesburg on the eve of this week's African Union summit, where an official report critical of Zimbabwe's human-rights abuses was circulated for the first time and as Mbeki's self-imposed June deadline for resolving the Zimbabwean crisis loomed.
Besides Mbeki, other ANC officials who attended the meeting include Motlanthe, ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma, treasurer-general Mendi Msimang and chairman Mosiuoa Lekota. The Zanu-PF delegation was led by Nkomo.
A Zanu-PF politburo member told the Sunday Times that his party had asked the ANC to help it secure a convincing majority in Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections due early next year.
The ANC endorsed Mugabe's hotly disputed re-election in 2002 and Zanu-PF's controversial 2000 victory. Zanu-PF officials said the party now wanted the ANC to go further than "just mere endorsement" of elections and help it win at the polls.
They said the ANC had agreed in principle to deploy between four and six election strategists to Zimbabwe ahead of the election to help Zanu-PF prepare a winning campaign.
Senior members of the Zanu-PF executive were briefed about the meeting by Nkomo.
"Zanu-PF has asked for the ANC to help to win next year's election and my understanding is that the ANC has in principle agreed to send between four and six 'strategists' to assist it during the forthcoming election," a senior official said.
Motlanthe said yesterday that no such agreement had been made, but added that there was an "open invitation" to Zanu-PF to study the South African party's success.
He confirmed that a Zanu-PF dele gation had visited the ANC headquarters "on a Monday" in June, holding discussions for about three hours until noon with the top six ANC office-bearers, including Mbeki.
"I was at that meeting. I am not at liberty to say what we did talk about, but it is true they were here to congratulate the ANC, not to ask for help. I am sure they will do that when it comes closer to the election," said Motlanthe.
Asked whether the ANC had agreed to make strategists available, he said: "There is no truth to that. We did not agree to that."
Nkomo, widely regarded as a possible successor to Mugabe, said Zanu-PF and the ANC had "close ties and shared vision in the region". He said the ANC had done better than expected by winning 70% of the vote in South Africa. He added that Zanu-PF had also come to congratulate the South Africans on winning the rights to host the 2010 World Cup.
Mugabe attended Mbeki's inauguration in Pretoria on April 27 and was wildly cheered by the crowds at the ceremony. Already the oldest leader in Africa, Mugabe, 84, has said he will retire when his term ends in 2008.
"Mugabe is desperate to win the election because if his party loses he will have to resign or rule for three years with an opposition-dominated and effectively hostile parliament," a South African government official told the Sunday Times.
Nkomo said: "We wanted to congratulate them [the ANC] on their election victory. We were not there necessarily to borrow election strategies because their situation is different from ours... but, of course, it would be expected that they would tell us how they did it.
"The ANC is a sister party and our relations date back many years ago when the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo was in South Africa [in the 1940s] and also during our liberation struggles," he said.
"We sent delegations before and after the election to South Africa. The first one was there to monitor the election and the second went to congratulate our sister party."
Zanu-PF failed to secure 50% of the vote in parliamentary elections in June 2000, taking 62 seats to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's 57 seats. The ruling party's majority was increased by presidential nominations and seats for traditional leaders, but the result shook Mugabe's confidence.
Motlanthe said Zanu-PF delegations regularly visited the ANC to study organisational and strategic issues.
"The sister parties always have access to the ANC. They send people. Some go to the provinces, some go to headquarters," Motlanthe said.
The ANC hosted a conference of liberation movements and parties outside Johannesburg in 2000 to share experiences of a series of multi-party elections across the region. Among the issues discussed were ways to prevent former liberation movements being ousted by parties perceived to have close ties with Western nations.
Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change, often attacked by Mugabe as a "British-sponsored puppet party", has accused the ANC of colluding with Zanu-PF in the stop-start inter-party talks intended to resolve the country's deep political and economic crisis.
Motlanthe said the ANC had sent a 10-member delegation to the 2000 election in Zimbabwe and would probably send a similar or larger delegation to next year's election to "gather first-hand information".
If this is not a South African government endorsement of Mugabe, I don't know what is.
Kill him.
And so much for Bush's misplaced reliance on Mbeki to settle the Zimbabwe issue.
Bush is way too trusting of leftists.
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