Free Republic

Mbeki's Haiti visit backfires January 03 2004 at 10:11AM By Peter Fabricius Bullets fired at a South African police helicopter and into a sports stadium in Haiti forced President Thabo Mbeki to call off his controversial participation in the key ceremony marking Haiti's independence celebrations. South African police said on Friday that the South African helicopter was fired at on Thursday while it was carrying South African security officials scouting the port city of Gonaives to ensure that it was safe before Mbeki visited it hours later. Mbeki was supposed to join Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a re-enactment ceremony...

Tutu attacks Mbeki's stand on Zimbabwe By Peter Fabricius in Johannesburg 16 December 2003 The former Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu has warned that South Africa's credibility is at stake over its failure to criticise human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. "The credibility of our democracy demands this," he said in a statement yesterday. "If we are seemingly indifferent to human rights violations happening in a neighbouring country, what is to stop us one day being indifferent to that in our own?"At the recent Commonwealth summit, South Africa lobbied for the re-admission of Zimbabwe, suspended in March last year. South Africa also...