Events have happened at a pulsating pace over the past week since last
weekend’s emergency SADC summit on the Zimbabwean crisis in Lusaka as well
as the UN Security Council meeting in New York from which Mbeki once again
failed to redeem himself as the point man on his northern neighbour’s
political logjam. Not only did ANC leader Jacob Zuma openly differed and
blasted Mbeki on his ridiculous utterances that there was no crisis in
Zimbabwe, but MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who is Zimbabwe’s president in
waiting, turned on the heat Thursday when he called on Mbeki to step down as
mediator on Zimbabwe and be replaced by President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia.
The Zimbabwean on Sunday heard from impeccable SA official sources that
Mbeki’s glaring blundering over the past week on the Zimbabwean issue had
triggered “massive deliberations and correspondence from the international
community and also involving the world’s soccer governing body, FIFA over
whether SA could still be considered a safe host considering what’s
happening in Zim”, according to a reliable source.
“It was made clear to Mbeki that almost everyone including his own party are
losing patience with his suspicious handling of the Zimbabwe issue but worse
of all was imagining the World Cup being moved to Australia,” the source
said. “A team was sent recently to secretly assess the impact of the
Zimbabwean crisis on SA’s hosting of the soccer finals and it presented a
very bad report to FIFA, the European Union, USA as well as other interested
groups across the whole world. It is therefore a foregone conclusion that
these regions and countries as well as associations will certainly demand
that the finals be moved to Australia if the Zimbabwean political crisis is
not resolved by June or latest August”
“I am afraid, there is nobody to give the comment right now,” a secretary
said from Mbeki’s office in Pretoria Thursday.
With plans by the Mugabe military junta in Zimbabwe to, if at all, defer the
rerun of the presidential elections by at least three months from a still
yet unreached date when that declaration will be made, Mbeki finds himself
in a cul-de-sac and as one source from the SA embassy in Harare said, “he
now faces the risk of being condemned and despised by the whole business and
football community in SA, in fact, by the whole nation, which certainly wont
take lightly to losing the hosting right simply because of this farcical
so-called quiet diplomacy of his”.
Post published in: News