SA in 'cold war' - Mbeki
2005-01-04 19:53
Pretoria - Neither South Africa, nor Sudan have yet been able to establish societies acceptable to all their people, President Thabo Mbeki told that country's national assembly.
He noted that while the two countries achieved their respective democracy and independence nearly 40 years apart, both had to work out what of societies they wanted to build, amid dynamics of diversity and filled with tensions and antagonisms.
Mbeki was in Sudan after attending last week's signing of a peace agreement between the Khartoum government and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement in neighbouring Kenya.
He also visited the troubled Darfur region and received an honorary doctorate from the Africa International University in Khartoum.
Mbeki said that while South Africa had not experienced violent social conflict since 1994, there was "perhaps what we might describe as a cold rather than a hot war, conducted by those who are unwilling to accept the end of white minority rule".
"Nevertheless, even these, who might be ready to engage in a cold war, have been unwilling to support those who decided that they should take up arms against the democratic order. We can safely say that no social base exists in South Africa to support anybody who might think it necessary to resort to force to solve any of the problems we face."
Back home, the Democratic Alliance criticised Mbeki's New Year's Day address to the House in Omdurman saying it had been a missed opportunity "to spell out the African Union's position on Darfur and what is required to settle the ghastly situation there".
"President Mbeki's address was, in our view, far too gently reminiscent of his 'quiet diplomacy' toward Zimbabwe.
"Mollycoddling the Sudanese government is hardly appropriate in the face of its failure to put a stop to the Janjaweed terrorism where Arab Muslims kill and rape African Muslims, a situation which has been described by the United Nations as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises."
On his reference to a "cold war" in South Africa, DA foreign affairs spokesperson Douglas Gibson said: "President Mbeki should not talk down his own country when he is abroad, nor should he use a foreign platform to play one section of the community off against another."
- SAPA