MUGABE ALLY UNDER FIRE:AFTER ROBERT Mugabe, the person receiving the most criticism for the crisis in Zimbabwe is not even one of its citizens. Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, the most powerful country in sub-Saharan Africa, is under fire at home and abroad for his refusal to condemn Mr Mugabe and admit that his policy of quiet diplomacy has proved a serious error.
For several years western nations have urged Mr Mbeki to use his influence - and South Africa's economic muscle - to pressure the Zimbabwean president.
But even as millions of Zimbabweans flooded over the border into South Africa in search of refuge and work - a mass movement that contributed to the xenophobic attacks on black foreigners in South Africa last month - Mr Mbeki insisted that dialogue, rather than arm-twisting, was the best way forward.
For a while he had sympathy at home, with analysts pointing out that while Britain and the US were calling for action on Zimbabwe, there were few realistic options other than engagement. Calls for criticism of Mr Mugabe's often brutal land redistribution policies were also seen as unrealistic, given South Africa's own need to address glaring property inequalities.
It has long been clear that the western pressure has irritated Mr Mbeki, an intellectual who espouses the idea of an African renaissance.
In assuming the role of mediator between Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and the opposition MDC party of Morgan Tsvangirai, Mr Mbeki believed that he could solve the problem his own way.
Adam Habib, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, has said that Mr Mbeki's critics failed to realise that it was his intervention that led to a largely successful poll in March - one that saw the MDC sweep the parliamentary vote.
But by saying there was no crisis in Zimbabwe during the month-long wait for the results of the presidential vote, Mr Mbeki in effect bought Mr Mugabe time and, in most people's eyes, lost all claim to impartiality.
Much has been made of the South African president's sympathy for Mr Mugabe as a liberation hero and how the need to allow him a graceful exit has influenced the softly-softly approach. There is also little doubt that Mr Mbeki is no fan of Mr Tsvangirai or the MDC, which is strongly supported by white Zimbabwean farmers and is the first political entity in the region to successfully challenge a liberation movement.
But Piers Pigou, director of the South Africa History Archive, believes the "solidarity between liberation movements" theory is overblown, pointing out that Zanu-PF was no great ally of the ANC during the apartheid era.
"Mbeki has fundamentally misread the situation in Zimbabwe; the political advice and intelligence reports he has been given is appalling," said Mr Pigou, who called the quiet diplomacy policy "a remarkable example of how to mess something up".