S.Africa Opposes Zimbabwe Regime Change

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) -- South African President Thabo Mbeki insisted Thursday that negotiations between Zimbabwe's ruling party and its opposition were the only way to end the crisis in the country and rejected any outside efforts to force a change in government.

Mbeki has long advocated quiet diplomacy toward Zimbabwe, where a collapsing economy has led to mounting political repression. Since March, he has acted as mediator between the ruling party and opposition, but so far there has been no visible progress in the talks.

"We are not going to be involved in any regime change in Zimbabwe," Mbeki told Parliament. "We are not going to do it. We think it is fundamentally wrong."

He also said it was wrong to use sanctions to pressure Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, and he dismissed comparisons between the situation in Zimbabwe and apartheid-era South Africa.

"We can't take on our shoulders the decision to determine who shall be the government of the people of Zimbabwe. It's not going to happen," he said.

"The Zimbabwean leadership, both political and the non-governmental organizations ... are quite convinced they can and will agree among themselves how to handle the situation to have free and fair elections," he said. "I believe them."

Critics accuse Mbeki of doing too little to stop the human rights abuses and imprisonment of opposition figures in Zimbabwe. They say that South Africa, the regional diplomatic and economic powerhouse, is helping prop up Mugabe's regime by refusing to take a tougher stance.

Mike Lowe, a member of South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance, said Zimbabweans crossing the border into South Africa have expressed extreme levels of despair.

"We spoke to a brutalized, terrorized and often beaten people," he said. "The people I spoke to told me a story of fear and hunger. This is a human tragedy."

Mugabe has blamed Western sanctions for the economic problems crippling his country, a former breadbasket in the region. Earlier this week, he blasted former colonial power Britain's "heinous attempts to destroy the country and bring down its democratically elected government."

But most observers say that it is Mugabe's economic policies that are to blame for an official inflation of nearly 8,000 percent, unemployment of 80 percent and shortages of most basic products. They say the government's order seven years ago to begin seizing thousands of white-owned commercial farms disrupted the agriculture-based economy.