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International relations advisor to South Africa - Lindiwe Zulu on BTH
Lance Guma, SW Radio Africa
June 17, 2010

Introduction

SW Radio Africa journalist Lance Guma speaks to the International Relations Advisor to South African President Jacob Zuma, Lindiwe Zulu. She is part of the facilitation team appointed to mediate in the endless power sharing dispute in Zimbabwe. Lance asks her if the perceived bias of the ANC towards ZANU PF is undermining the mediation and whether they can ever resolve the issue, raised by ZANU PF, of western targeted sanctions, when the other parties in the coalition have no power to remove them.

Lance Guma: South African president Jacob Zuma's International Relations Advisor expressed concern at the level of misinformation being peddled around their mediation efforts in Zimbabwe. Lindiwe Zulu who is one of the mediators to the endless talk's saga in Zimbabwe was responding to media reports sparked by comments from Mugabe who claimed the team of facilitators from South Africa would fly into Harare on Monday this week.

Now the background is that Mugabe came back from South Africa on Saturday where he had gone to attend the FIFA World Cup and immediately told journalists at the Harare International Airport that the three party leaders had finalised a report on their position in the talks. Mugabe went on to say the South African facilitation team, that includes cabinet ministers Charles Nqakula, Mac Maharaj and Zulu was due to fly in on Monday and deliberate on that report.

Zulu however says she was surprised to hear that they were expected in Zimbabwe so Behind the Headlines tracked her down and the first question we asked her was what is the source of this confusion?

Lindiwe Zulu: I'm not exactly sure where the confusion was caused if there was confusion at all because from our side, the normal process and procedures which usually happen happened, the principals met, after the principals met they produced a report, a report which was then presented to the president, President Jacob Zuma and the next step for this is for President Zuma to engage with that report, the facilitation team to also engage with that report and take issues from there.

Because what is supposed to happen is that this report that we are getting, we are expecting a report like this from the principals because the last report we received was a report that was presented to the facilitation team by the negotiators. Then the negotiators were expected to present their report to the principals who then were supposed to endorse the report. If there are any issues which were outstanding, engage those outstanding issues and take the process forward by presenting their report to the facilitation team and the president, President Jacob Zuma.

Guma: Now I think part of the problem Ms Zulu was that President Mugabe came back from South Africa on Saturday where he had gone to attend the World Cup and told journalists at the airport that the three party leaders had finalised their report and that you were meant to come in on Monday.

Zulu: Well I cannot really talk about that because I was not there and it's possible that President Mugabe might have had a discussion with President Zuma and there was that element of a meeting but in as far as we are concerned the process at the moment is such that the president has to engage with the report and then take it from there. If he is comfortable with the report, he will then take the report to the chairperson of the Troika. If there are issues that he still thinks that he needs to engage with the principals, he will do just that.

Guma: Now there's some slight confusion there over who really will move this process forward, President Zuma or President Guebuza of Mozambique who is the chairman of the Troika. Can you clarify that for us?

Zulu: There is no confusion either in that because President Zuma was mandated by the SADC to take the process forward and it clearly stipulates and indicates that President Zuma will have to report to the president of Mozambique who is currently the chairperson of Troika and President Guebuza will then present his report to SADC.

Guma: Now these negotiations have taken quite some time, we know the Southern African Development Committee is due to hold a summit in August, is it clear whether by then Zimbabwe will probably be an item on the agenda? Do you know?

Zulu: Well Zimbabwe will continue to be an item on the agenda from a perspective of the Global Political Agreement and its implementation. Until such time that those issues have been resolved, Zimbabwe will continue to be on the agenda on those basis. Other than of course the fact that Zimbabwe is part and parcel of the SADC community but in this particular case what SADC is seized with is the implementation of the Global Political Agreement and the resolution of all challenges that Zimbabwe is facing from a perspective of the Global Political Agreement.

Guma: There's a worry among Zimbabweans that as soon as the World Cup is over, South Africa will lose motivation to help sort out the political crisis. Can you assure them that this is not the case?

Zulu: The basis for our engagement with Zimbabwe and assisting in resolving the conflict in Zimbabwe was not based on 2010. We have been engaged in the situation in Zimbabwe even before President Zuma came into office, president, former president Thabo Mbeki was engaged in it, we continued with it because we truly believe that we've got a role to play as South Africa until such time that Zimbabwe is back to normal.

Guma: One other issue that I'd want to also ask and a lot of Zimbabweans are quite curious on this, in September 2008 the political parties signed up to the Global Political Agreement, so the obvious question for many is what is there to negotiate when a document was signed in September 2008? There are no concessions there, people signed up to an Agreement so why not simply implement it?

Zulu: That's exactly what we are dealing with. It's about implementing that Global Political Agreement which all the principals signed upon but also to deal with any challenge that comes across because signing an Agreement and implementing an Agreement are two different issues. You sign an Agreement and in the process of implementing what you have agreed upon, we are bound to come across challenges.

Guma: You've expressed concern Ms Zulu about the level of information, misinformation rather which is being peddled around your mediation in Zimbabwe, would you think maybe part of the problem is the secrecy shrouding the talks, that not enough information is coming from those taking part in the process and this is why there are a lot of speculative stories around it?

Zulu: I'm not sure about shrouding or hiding or keeping any information, for starters the negotiators themselves have always spoken about the process, their negotiations and how far they are; the facilitation team itself, including President Zuma's visit to Zimbabwe, there's always been press conferences thereafter, journalists have always been able to ask questions but at the end of the day, also negotiations are not always about going, running out and saying this is where we are. There are times when the negotiators need to lock themselves in their room and deal with these issues in such a way that they are not able to immediately communicate almost all the time these issues, that must be understood, that's the nature of negotiations anywhere else in the world.

Guma: ZANU PF is insisting on the removal of targeted sanctions, the MDC are saying they have no power to have these taken off. How are you going to be able to resolve such a sticking point?

Zulu: I don't think it's a sticking point at all because all three political parties have agreed that there is a need for them in unison to go out there and convince those that imposed the sanctions to lift the sanctions, number one. Number two there isn't confusion either around this issue because SADC also as a regional body took a decision that all of them must work towards the lifting of sanctions, so in our opinion, there isn't any confusion there.

Guma: There's one issue the MDC has raised, that of hate speech in the State media. We continue to hear reports of particularly the president's spokesperson George Charamba continuing to incite hate speech in the State media. Are these issues that you bring up when you are taking part in these negotiations and if so, is there anything being done to stop this?

Zulu: The Zimbabweans themselves are doing something about that because hate speech was part of the agenda item, if you recall, they had 27 item agendas from December, that issue of hate speech was part of it and they all agreed on what needs to be done about that and we are confident that continuously they will to try to work towards ensuring that that issue of hate speech as they have agreed they implement the decision they themselves took without anybody pressing them to take such decisions.

Guma: Now Ms Zulu there have been fears expressed by some who have looked at relations between the African National Congress (ANC) and ZANU PF and expressed worries that the ANC's rather too close to ZANU PF and this would, in a sense, affect the mediation process. What's your response to that?

Zulu: That cannot affect the mediation process because from the very beginning when we started the mediation process we were treating people equally as people that had signed the Global Political Agreement. They all committed themselves to the Global Political Agreement. Our engagement with them is based on the fact that SADC mandated us to deal with this issue and it's a government related issue, it's not a party political (issue). We are not necessarily representing our political party in this issue. We've been mandated in as government to deal with the issue from government to government.

Guma: Is there a time in this or is there a period in this mediation where you've had to be, in a sense, frustrated because people point at times and say it's pretty obvious who is impeding progress? Do you ever have those moments?

Zulu: No we have not been frustrated by any element of the progress because once you understand what are the principles of negotiation, what's the purpose of negotiations. Purpose is to make sure that you come to a point where everybody is in agreement with what is on the table. What we've been working towards is firstly to treat them equally by demanding on them that they all signed the Political Agreement, the Global Political Agreement, we are holding each and every one of them accountable to an agreement that they all agreed to without being forced by anyone to do so.

Guma: And finally, clearly there is no time scale, are you working with an open time scale here or is there a particular time where you say right this should be resolved by this time?

Zulu: We do put those timeframes because we can't continuously, endlessly work with a timetable that has got no limit. There's always a limit to time and therefore the negotiators and the principals have always understood that we are coming in wanting things to be resolved, we can't be working just generally for the sake of generally working. There's always a timetable, yes in negotiations you don't necessarily always stick to the timetable because there's challenges from time to time but we do have a timeframe, which by the way is a timeframe which was given by SADC, the grouping that mandated us.

Guma: Could we know this time frame?

Zulu: Well no, I can't put the timeframe at the moment, I mean it's something that you would find in the Global Political Agreement itself. I don't have the Global Political Agreement in front of me.

Guma: That was South African president Jacob Zuma's International Relations Advisor Lindiwe Zulu joining us on Behind the Headlines.

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