Thatcher sees sea-change in southern Africa

Press, 30 March 1989, Page 8

Thatcher sees sea-change in southern Africa

NZPA-Reuter Harare The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, has launched a push for a negotiated settlement to the problems of southern Africa, and has hinted that her door will be open for dialogue to top South Africans. She made clear that she believed the time was ripe for a diplomatic initiative when she arrived to a warm welcome in Harare from President Robert Mugabe. Mrs Thatcher said South Africa had a lesson to learn from the way Zimbabwe had gained its independence from Britain in 1980.

“We sorted it out here by negotiation and there was an absolutely free election. In South Africa they have a lot to learn from the way we went about that, and the success of Zimbabwe,” she said.

“I think there is a sea-change in the region; there is an atmosphere about these problems that they can be solved by patient negotiation,” Mrs Thatcher said, with Mr Mugabe standing beaming by her side. British officials told reporters on the plane taking Mrs Thatcher to Zimbabwe from Nigeria that she planned to follow up her surprise March 15 meeting in London with the South African Foreign Minister, Pik Botha, by talking to other Cabinet Ministers from Pretoria.

No invitations will be sent out, but the door to her office will be open to Cabinet members when they are in Europe. Officials said she was particularly keen to meet the Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis.

Mrs Thatcher’s meeting with Pik Botha was her first with a South African Cabinet Minister since 1984, and underlined her conviction that the time is right to begin pushing for faster internal reform. “She believes things are moving in southern Africa and in South Africa, and isolation of South Africa doesn’t pay; it is important to talk to South Africa to influence them,” an aide said.

Mr Mugabe has recently softened his previous hardline opposition to dialogue with South Africa, influenced by the diplomatic settlement last December between Angola, Cuba and South Africa which covered Namibian independence as well as a Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola.

In a speech in Harare to a meeting of African heads of State two weeks ago, Mr Mugabe set out for the first

time a set of conditions under which he said dialogue with Pretoria would be acceptable. Mrs Thatcher’s views are therefore likely to find a more receptive response from Mr Mugabe than might have been the case a few months ago.. The two leaders are expected to sidestep the issue of sanctions against South Africa,, which Mr Mugabe favours and she opposes.

After talking to the Zimbabwean President in Harare, Mrs Thatcher will fly with him to Nyanga military training camp in eastern Zimbabwe near the border with Mozambique for tripartite talks with the Mozambican President, Joaquim Chissano.

They will watch Mozambican soldiers being trained by British instructors under a programme that has helped remedy some of the weaknesses in basic infantry tactics of Mr Chissano’s army, and has also earned Britain prestige in the region. Nyanga, a picturesque area surrounded by spectacular rocky outcrops, is a favoured posting for British soldiers. On his way there last July, the British Opposition leader, Neil Kinnock, found himself arrested for two hours at a remote airstrip by a Zimbabwean lance-corporal.