SADC, Mbeki must ensure the Zimbabwe assignment succeeds

And although I cannot recall any reports about contacts with the Zimbabwe government, I have no doubt that this will have already happened. For as President Mbeki has already indicated, this is an urgent assignment since there is very little time left before the 2008 elections.

We should all be pleased about the recent developments, and the SADC leaders commended for their bold initiative. True, the SADC governments have prevaricated endlessly over the Zimbabwe crisis, prolonging the misery of the people of Zimbabwe, and compounding the problems that the crisis causes in their own countries. And whenever they grudgingly tried to resolve the crisis, they usually timidly let the Zimbabwe government scupper their efforts in different ways. Nevertheless, the latest initiative deserves support even though it was launched with the usual gestures of appeasement towards the Mugabe regime.