UNITED KINGDOM / FILE: As Zimbabwe plunges deeper into crisis, Nobel prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu says Africa needs to do more

Record ID: 452862

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM / FILE: As Zimbabwe plunges deeper into crisis, Nobel prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu says Africa needs to do more
  • Date: 22nd September 2007
  • Summary: (AD1) MUSINA AND BEIT BRIDGE BORDER POST, SOUTH AFRICA (FILE - JULY 27+28, 2007) (REUTERS) ZIMBABWEAN IMMIGRANTS LED BY TRAFFICKERS, WALKING IN THE BUSH
  • Embargoed: 7th October 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVABBMEOQ81HKBV7MZWAN4E9S0U4
  • Story Text: With the economy close to collapsing and faced with hunger in their own country, many Zimbabweans are jumping borders in search of food, petrol and work.
    Millions in Zimbabwe face rising poverty and unemployment, with joblessness around 80 percent, and those with jobs have to queue for hours to get to work or buy scarce basic foodstuffs.
    With an estimated 4,000 people fleeing this desperate situation every day, South African Nobel prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu says mediation is not enough and Africa must do more to end the crisis.
    "It has been deeply deeply distressing the kinds of things that have happened to ordinary people in Zimbabwe. And, I have said, and I think should repeat it, that all all of us Africans should hang our heads in shame for having allowed such a desperate situation to continue almost without anybody doing anything to try and stop it," Tutu told ITV news in London this week.
    A general strike against Mugabe collapsed on Wednesday (September 19).
    Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has clamped down on opponents as frustrations grow over an economic crisis marked by the world's highest inflation rate of about 6,600 percent.
    South African President Thabo Mbeki has been mandated by a grouping of southern African states to mediate in talks between Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change to negotiate constitutional reforms.
    Tutu said the international community must pressure African leaders to intervene more effectively in the crisis.
    "The soft, soft approach, quiet diplomacy, has not worked at all and we want something a little more forthright, a little more categorical, to say 'look, if such and such doesn't happen by such and such a timeline, then such and such will be the consequences," said Tutu.
    Mbeki and other regional leaders say only quiet diplomacy can work in Zimbabwe but Western diplomats and other critics say that strategy has given Mugabe room to manoeuvre.
    Critics say Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has brought the country to its knees with controversial policies such as seizing white-owned farms for landless blacks but has further deepened the crisis by ordering businesses to stop raising prices.
    Mugabe blames Western powers, who have imposed targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe, for the collapse of the economy and accuses them of plotting with the opposition to oust him.
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