Africa’s Woes Weigh on Mbeki’s Hopeful Vision

As Thabo Mbeki prepares for his first trip to the United States as South Africa’s president, this troubled continent is proving to be a formidable distraction for him.

A state visit to the United States is a big deal for any foreign leader, but for Mbeki--just 11 months into his presidency--the six-day sojourn scheduled to begin next weekend is his chance to talk global with everyone from Texas Gov. George W. Bush to San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

With that in mind, Mbeki invited a small group of foreign journalists to the presidential guest house here Saturday. A pipe-smoking policy wonk who enjoys nothing more than a thoughtful discussion about the weighty issues that shape the global scene, he spoke about the points he plans to address during stopovers in Washington, San Francisco, Atlanta and Austin, Texas: restructuring the world economy, overhauling international financial institutions and eradicating poverty.

“I am convinced personally that there are things that can be done, in fact globally, to achieve this sort of progress that everyone wants,” he said. “There is one country that stands out as obviously the country that needs to take the lead with regards to addressing these kinds of issues, and that is the United States.”

When it came time for questions, however, his audience leaped in as if firing bullets. What about lawlessness in Zimbabwe? Chaos in Sierra Leone? AIDS in South Africa? War in Ethiopia and Eritrea? Can the African renaissance--a concept Mbeki made famous several years ago during a worldwide surge in Afro-optimism--possibly turn any more sour?

The barrage was not unexpected. A presidential aide said Mbeki had agreed to the gathering in part to counter unfavorable media coverage about the continent in recent weeks--something that Pretoria fears could detract from what is supposed to be a triumphant tour of the United States. But that did not make the session any easier for the president, whose casual knit shirt and friendly banter belied his general distaste for intimate meetings with a foreign press corps he considers hostile to most everything African.

“We tend to get overshadowed by these spectacular bad things that happen, and so you get a kind of pessimism that persists,” Mbeki said. “We need to look again at the question ‘What do we do about Africa?’ Not to deny the bad things that are happening, but also not then to allow that those bad things overshadow very important work that is being done.”

Mbeki’s predicament, some critics say, has not been helped by his own performance in the weeks leading up to the U.S. trip. His understated diplomacy in neighboring Zimbabwe, where illegal invasions of commercial farms have led to at least 19 deaths over the past few months, has been branded as too timid.

So far, his intervention there has produced no results, which Mbeki acknowledged Saturday. In a new bid at breaking the logjam, he said his political party, the African National Congress, had dispatched a delegation to Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, this weekend to meet with both the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and officials from the ruling party of President Robert Mugabe.

Some economists say Mbeki’s stance in Zimbabwe has been harmful to South Africa because investors here fear that the turmoil could spread south. Last week, when Mbeki assured Parliament that he would not tolerate similar land grabs in his nation, the South African currency gained strength against the dollar for the first time in weeks. Economists said the market was starved for some presidential leadership on the issue.

“I know people have been saying, ‘Why don’t you make these statements?’ and so on,” Mbeki said Saturday. “We have proceeded from the position that there are problems there. These are our neighbors. We have to live with the Zimbabweans forever.”

Mbeki is also taking considerable heat here and abroad for his government’s contentious AIDS policies. South Africa has an estimated 4 million people infected with HIV, making it one of the worst-hit countries in the world. Yet many AIDS activists complain that the government has been slow to respond to the crisis--and at times seems to be in denial.

For one thing, Mbeki has steadfastly refused to distribute the anti-AIDS drug AZT, commonly used in the U.S. and elsewhere, even to pregnant women infected with HIV. Price discounts offered by the drug’s manufacturer have held no sway with him. On Saturday, he said that the South African health system is ill-equipped to properly monitor a wholesale distribution of the drug, which can be toxic, and that he remains unconvinced of the efficacy of AZT for pregnant women.

The president has also shocked the AIDS establishment by including on a newly formed AIDS advisory panel several scientists who reject the conventional wisdom that AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus. Mbeki said Saturday that he has not reached any conclusions himself--the panel is expected to issue a report in July--but he offered no apologies for posing unpopular questions about a disease that is Africa’s biggest killer.

“Both sides [on the AIDS panel] accepted that there are major problems of science that are not solved,” he said.

A major thrust of Mbeki’s U.S. trip, aides said, will be to attract foreign investors to South Africa, which, despite a recent economic upturn, is racked by high unemployment and pervasive poverty. His schedule calls for sessions with textile manufacturers in Georgia and unspecified business executives in Texas. He also plans meetings in Silicon Valley.

And while Mbeki will be prepared to field questions about Sierra Leone, Congo and other hot spots--and to push hard for international help in solving Africa’s problems--he said he will also encourage Americans to consider Africa for what it really is: a big, diverse continent with many countries, some doing lots of good.

“The African continent represents a magnified picture of the sort of global problems that we will be discussing,” he said.