Publication

This paper analyzes South Africa’s mediation and facilitation approach to the inter-party negotiations for the 2008 parliamentary and presidential elections in Zimbabwe. The author describes South Africa’s approach as guided by four factors: historical experiences, its post-apartheid foreign policy, African conflict resolution approaches, and a diagnosis of the dynamics of the Zimbabwean conflict. He concludes that the often-criticized 'quiet diplomacy' approach taken by Mbeki was not actually that quiet; it was just not what pro-Western media and Western countries wanted to hear.