Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, campaigning Sunday, says he wrote a letter asking the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, to step aside as mediator in Zimbabwe (Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/Associated Press).JOHANNESBURG: June 9th. (NY Times) — The curious case of the mysterious letter from Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, to South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, got a new chapter this weekend that raised yet more questions about Mr. Mbeki’s credibility as the regional mediator in Zimbabwe’s increasingly tumultuous political crisis. Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, campaigning Sunday, says he wrote a letter asking the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, to step aside as mediator in Zimbabwe. News of Mr. Tsvangirai’s impassioned, four-page missive broke a week ago in South African newspapers. In the May 13 letter, marked “privileged, private and confidential,” Mr. Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, maintained that Mr. Mbeki had favored Zimbabwe’s aging strongman, President Robert Mugabe, and that he should step aside as the sole mediator.
Mr. Tsvangirai, now campaigning for a June 27 runoff election with Mr. Mugabe, recounted his shock at seeing Mr. Mbeki on television on April 12 holding hands with Mr. Mugabe in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, and saying there was no crisis. That day, regional heads of state were meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, to confront Zimbabwe’s crisis, set off by the government’s extraordinary delay in releasing the results of the March presidential election. “In fact, since the 29 March election, Zimbabwe has plunged into horrendous violence while you have been mediating,” Mr. Tsvangirai wrote. “With respect, if we continue like this, there will be no country left.” Then last week, the story of the letter to Mr. Mbeki — who had been designated by the Southern African Development Community, a regional bloc of nations, to mediate the political conflict in Zimbabwe — took a strange turn.
Frank Chikane, director general of Mr. Mbeki’s office, held a news conference on Wednesday in which he denied not only that the president had received the letter, but that it even existed, according to the South African Press Association. And in a statement, Mr. Mbeki’s office accused the news media of printing a fabrication and being taken in by a disinformation campaign. “Regarding these reports, the presidency reiterates that President Thabo Mbeki has not received any such letter from Mr. Tsvangirai,” the statement said. The statement also took the news media to task for asking about rumors that many South Africans were struggling to understand Mr. Mbeki’s silence since the election as dozens of opposition supporters in Zimbabwe were killed and hundreds brutally beaten. The rumors “include claims that either President Mbeki or Mrs. Zanele Mbeki are supposed to be blood relatives of Mrs. Grace Mugabe,” Mr. Mugabe’s wife, the statement noted in a tone of disbelief.
Trying to understand Mr. Mbeki is a favorite parlor game here in Johannesburg. Its latest iterations include wondering why he never visited South Africa’s impoverished townships as they exploded with xenophobic violence last month. Asked this question on Sunday, Mr. Mbeki’s spokesman, Mukoni Ratshitanga, replied that the government had responded appropriately. “Government is a collective,” he said. “It’s not an individual.” Then his phone buzzed with another call that he said was very important and he signed off. Another persistent question is why Mr. Mbeki has stuck to his “quiet diplomacy” with Mr. Mugabe as Zimbabwe’s economy has sunk ever deeper into ruin and sent millions of despairing Zimbabweans pouring into South Africa. Does he have a soft spot for the 84-year-old Mr. Mugabe because he led a liberation movement against white rule that resonates in South Africa? Does he dislike Mr. Tsvangirai?
Mr. Tsvangirai, when interviewed in mid-May, seemed to lean toward the theory that the nations’ shared liberation history was the cause. Asked if Mr. Mbeki liked him, he laughed heartily and said, “If he had his choice of who would be the president of Zimbabwe, I think he would not jump up and say, hallelujah, Morgan Tsvangirai is the president of Zimbabwe!” Mr. Tsvangirai said Mr. Mbeki seemed to think Zimbabwe could solve its own political problems. “He said Zimbabweans must solve their own problems,” Mr. Tsvangirai said. “Zimbabweans went on the 29th and voted! How else do you want Zimbabweans to solve their problems?” On Wednesday, Mr. Tsvangirai was detained for nine hours on his way to a political rally in Zimbabwe. The next day, Mr. Mbeki’s office said he had called the authorities in Zimbabwe on Mr. Tsvangirai’s behalf. “President Mbeki appeals for calmness and proportionate use of language, the better to manage tensions generally associated with election campaigns in many parts of the world,” the statement from Mr. Mbeki’s office said. It maintained an evenhanded tone that drives the opposition in Zimbabwe to distraction, particularly since civic and human rights groups insist that the political violence there is carried out overwhelmingly by Mr. Mugabe’s agents.
South Africa’s opposition leader, Helen Zille, denounced Mr. Mbeki in an open letter on Friday. “By appeasing Mugabe and endorsing every fundamentally flawed election in Zimbabwe,” she wrote, “you are complicit in the tyranny that has befallen that country.” Finally on Saturday, Zimbabwe’s opposition party issued a statement saying that, indeed, it had sent Mr. Tsvangirai’s letter to Mr. Mbeki and promising to send him a fresh copy. George Sibotshiwe, Mr. Tsvangirai’s spokesman, said the original letter had been sent by courier while Mr. Tsvangirai was in South Africa. “I’ve made sure,” he said. “I’ve confirmed that the letter was delivered to them.”
By CELIA W. DUGGER
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