Zimbabweans can solve their own problems: Mbeki

The ANC denies there are divisions in the alliance over the SACP's request for Mbeki to step down

Zimbabwean people can solve their own problems and the rest of the world should just assist, said President Thabo Mbeki today. "The solutions to the problems of Zimbabwe rest in the hands of Zimbabweans," said Mbeki in a transcript of an interview he gave with Al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar.

The transcript was released by the presidency earlier today. "It's not South Africa that is going to solve the problems of Zimbabwe or indeed anybody else." He said he had sought over many years to say to the people and leaders of Zimbabwe "please get together and identify the problems. And say what needs to be done to solve the problems.

Mbeki said the task should not be shifted to defining what Zimbabwe should look like to foreigners. South Africans had negotiated their own resolution to end their problems - of apartheid - and Zimbabweans should do the same. "[In South Africa] we knew if somebody else came in and imposed their solution on us, it wouldn't last because it wouldn't be our solution. And the Zimbabwe question, the people who must find the solution, they are the people of Zimbabwe, the leaders of Zimbabwe.

"The rest of us must assist."

Yesterday, Mbeki flew to Zimbabwe to hold talks lasting more than three hours with president Robert Mugabe over Zimbabwe's post-election crisis. Mbeki said Southern African Development Community facilitation's with Zimbabwe's ruling party and opposition had deliberately been kept private. "We have avoided discussing those processes publicly because we do not believe that it is correct to conduct negotiations through the media." Speaking about the electricity crisis in South Africa, Mbeki said the power problem was a function of growth and economic development of South Africa. Mbeki said government would be building new power stations.

SA's transition smooth
"We will be building for instance, new power stations mainly gas fired and the reason they are gas fired is because they are quicker to build." Mbeki said government was planning on changing the mix of energy sources used including nuclear, coal-fired and renewable power sources. He said that when it came to land redistribution, interventions needed to be made not just to get land to the people but to equip them to use it well.

He said that since the end of apartheid South Africa had become a "normal citizen of the world." Many of the issues addressed by Mbeki were also raised at a summit that began on Friday between the African National Congress and its alliance partners, the SA Communist Party, the Congress of SA Trade Unions, and the SA National Civic Organisation.

Yesterday, leaders of the ruling party's alliance partners, the SACP and Cosatu, made it clear that they expected real change from the new ANC leadership. SACP general-secretary Blade Nzimande called for a "reconfiguration" of the alliance. What was occurring at present in government was "fire fighting," for example the crisis at the SABC, he said.

Nzimande said the SABC's board was "imposed on all of us by force" and citing the electricity crisis as another example, Nzimande said when the issue of privatisation was raised by the alliance partners, they were told that they did not see the bigger picture. Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi described the current political environment, with different leaders at Luthuli House and in the Union Buildings, s "difficult" and told delegates it would be "unwise" for them to ignore this matter.

The summit is continuing until tomorrow - Sapa