Moeletsi Mbeki sees potential for UN sanctions on Zimbabwe

By Violet Gonda
26 June 2008

Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of South Africa's President and deputy chairman of the South African Institute for International Affairs, believes there is now a potential for sanctions to be imposed against the Mugabe regime by the United Nations Security Council. Mbeki said he doesn’t expect anything coming out of SADC, but if the African Union and/or the United Nations Security Council passed a sanctions regulation, such as oil sanctions, then all the SADC countries would be obliged to comply whether they liked it or not.

He said the world doesn’t care for Mugabe anymore and he will not be able to continue to mislead people about the happenings in Zimbabwe.

He said Mugabe’s plan backfired, when he thought the MDC would participate in the presidential run-off in spite of the terror campaign against the electorate. “Secondly he never understood the importance of the MDC to world opinion. He sees the MDC as a small party, he is very condescending towards it, he never understood that the rest of the world takes the MDC very, very seriously,” Mbeki said.

The analyst said Mugabe never appreciated or thought there would be this massive reaction, especially from the United Nations Security Council and the African Union.

But the defiant ZANU PF regime has said it will go ahead with the run-off election although the United Nations Security Council and the SADC troika on Defence and Security issued statements calling for the postponement of Friday’s poll. Meanwhile election observers sent by the Pan African parliament have already started pulling out as they say there is no credible election to observe.

Legal opinion in South Africa says by not holding the run-off election 21 days after the first round of elections, Mugabe is no longer the legal President of Zimbabwe and Morgan Tsvangirai should be sworn in as head of state, as he had the most vote in the March 29th poll.

Moeletsi said; “This puts a new factor in front of the African Union which is that we now have an illegally constituted government in Zimbabwe.”

He added: “If the UN passed a resolution on oil sanctions against Zimbabwe South Africa would have to stop shipping oil to Zimbabwe which means Mugabe’s oppressive machine, the army and the police would grind to a halt.”

When asked if his brother Thabo is likely to change his soft stance on Zimbabwe, the analyst said the South African government would have to comply if there is a United Nations sanctions resolution on Zimbabwe. He said: “Otherwise it will attract the same sanctions against itself, so there is no chance that the South African government can defy the United Nations Security Council.”