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Aus pressures SA over Mugabe
23/03/2007 08:10 - (SA)
Sydney - Australia on Friday called on South Africa to pressure Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to quit, saying the 83-year-old leader was a disaster for his country.
Mugabe provoked international outrage last week when opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and several of his supporters were badly beaten by police after a demonstrator was shot dead.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said it was time for Zimbabwe's neighbours to push for an end to Mugabe's 27-year rule.
"We pussyfoot around far too much using diplomatic language," Howard told commercial radio. "This man is a disaster, his country is just a total heap of misery.
"I think it's time that the neighbouring African countries, particularly South Africa, exerted political pressure on Mugabe to go."
Howard noted that inflation was running at around 1 800% and Zimbabweans had one of the lowest life-expectancy rates in the world.
"Most people have run out of patience about what's happening in Zimbabwe," he said.
Brother in arms against apartheid
"He (Mugabe) was a brother in arms against apartheid, I know that, but that's a long time ago."
Foreign minister Alexander Downer also said Zimbabwe's neighbours needed to support change in the beleaguered country.
"It is a very bleak scene there and I think what the African community more generally needs to do is to put pressure on President Mugabe to liberalise his country (and) restore democracy," he said.
Downer told national radio he hoped an Australian cricket tour of Zimbabwe scheduled for September would be scrapped and he would discuss the issue with the sport's governing body after the World Cup.
The government had been concerned about the health of Zimbabwean opposition figure Sekai Holland, a former Australian citizen, and had on Thursday helped her flee to South Africa.
Holland, 64, is married to an Australian and lived in Australia for 20 years until returning to Zimbabwe after Mugabe came to power in 1980 at the end of white-minority rule.
She was beaten by police after an opposition rally on March 11, suffering three broken ribs, a broken knee, a broken leg, fractured hands and deep tissue bruising.
"She's been beaten up by Mugabe's thugs in effect and we've been very worried about her in hospital," Downer said.
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