ZIMBABWE: South African president Thabo Mbeki has privately conceded that his "quiet diplomatic" approach to influencing Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has had little effect, according to South Africa's new ambassador to Ireland, Devikarani Jana.
However, Ms Jana maintained it was wrong for western governments to expect Mr Mbeki publicly to condemn Mr Mugabe for the recent demolition of the country's shanty towns, as South Africa belonged to the African Union (AU), which she said was ultimately the entity responsible for reining in its members.
It is widely believed that Mr Mbeki, the continent's most powerful leader, had hoped that taking a more subtle diplomatic approach to Mr Mugabe would yield better results than any public condemnation.
"Our president has eventually agreed that the quiet diplomatic approach has not yielded the results that were expected," said Ms Jana.
During the run-up to the G8 summit in Scotland last July western governments had called unsuccessfully on Africa's leaders - and Mr Mbeki in particular - to pressurise Mr Mugabe to stop the state sanctioned demolition of thousands of homes in Zimbabwe's shanty towns which has left up to 700,000 people homeless.
Ms Jana maintains that it was "unreasonable" of western governments to expect South Africa to "go it alone" on Zimbabwe.
"South Africa cannot act as a single country, as it belongs to the AU, and it's up to the AU to take a stand against Zimbabwe," she said, but added that if South Africa were to provide a substantial loan to Zimbabwe - reported to be in the region of $1 billion - it would have to meet a number of conditions.
Since the G8 summit, the AU has become more involved and it announced earlier this month that its chairman, Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, had appointed former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano to mediate.
Ms Jana, a human rights lawyer who represented many anti-apartheid activists during the 1970s and 1980s - including Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko - said that as a human rights activist she was not happy with what had been going on in Zimbabwe recently, as there appeared to be "serious allegations of human rights violations".
"I speak for myself when I say I would like the AU to take stronger measures on that," she said.