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'Cautious optimism' for Zim
16/02/2004 08:54 - (SA)
Johannesburg - The SA Communist Party has expressed cautious optimism that Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF government and opposition Movement for Democratic Change are committed to future formal negotiations.
However, the SACP said on Sunday it was "uncertain" about the degree of commitment to serious negotiations, particularly from the side of Zanu-PF.
"We are concerned that there might be a lack of urgency. We are also deeply concerned at the continued repression of workers, opposition activists and of journalists.
"Such measures do not help to create a climate in which serious negotiations, in which both sides assume full, patriotic responsibility for taking their country out of its crisis," SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande, who was accompanied by his deputy, Jeremy Cronin, told reporters in Johannesburg.
Nzimande said his party believed that for too long the public debate in South Africa about Zimbabwe had been dominated by a conservative liberal paradigm.
"South Africans must not allow themselves to be manoeuvred into a position in which it seems that the ANC-led government needed the negotiations between that country's political party's to succeed more than Zimbabweans themselves."
He was speaking after a three-day meeting by the SACP's central committee, at which considerable time was devoted to the "deepening crises" in Zimbabwe.
In December the SACP sent a formal delegation to Zimbabwe. It met senior Zanu-PF cabinet ministers, the leader of MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, and the leadership of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions.
Cronin told reporters the negotiations were fundamentally about Zimbabwe's needs.
Allegory for South Africa
"Success should be Zimbabwean, and failures and delays should be blamed on the relevant Zimbabwean formations.
"Zimbabwe is an allegory for South Africa, and it is supposed, if implicitly, to represent the inevitable outcome when they (a black majority government) take over."
He said that when the SACP held discussions with the two Zimbabwean parties, they both indicated they were committed to negotiations, but the impression "we got from Zanu-PF was that they were scared of sharing power... they felt under siege..."
Cronin said although Zimbabwe was a neighbour and South Africa wanted to see that country's' problems solved, "they should assume responsibility".
"It was however important for South Africa to give them (Zimbabwe) as much support."
Nzimande said the SACP agreed that the land question was central to consolidating Zimbabwe's independence struggle.
"We agree that the continued monopolisation of this key sector of the Zimbabwean economy as late as 2000 (20 years after independence) by some 4 500 white farmers acted as a massive brake on transformation.
- SAPA
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