Indications that President Mugabe of Zimbabwe may be about to take account of international pressure are strongly to be welcomed. The fourteen-nation Southern African Development Community has appointed the presidents of South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique to form a committee to meet Mr Mugabe and negotiate an end to Zimbabwe's near-anarchy. By agreeing to the meeting Mr Mugabe has sanctioned the direct involvement of foreign intervention in the affairs of his country for the first time.
South Africa's President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, will be the key figure in this delegation. He has recently admitted that his mild diplomacy on the issue has borne no fruit and may now adopt a more forceful approach. Mr Mbeki will have leverage at his disposal. Without South African assistance Zimbabwe's energy crisis would be even worse than it is. He can make it clear, too, that opposition to Mr Mugabe's policies comes from Africa as well as from Europe. Mr Mbeki will also appreciate the complexity of the problems that have led to a collapse of the rule of law. Land hunger, a major factor in the current difficulties in Zimbabwe, is present too in South Africa. In a policy quite at variance with that of Mr Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Mr Mbeki's government has been involved in evicting squatters in certain rural areas.
In taking this action the South African authorities, while appreciating the need to provide land to the dispossessed, have clearly decided that the rule of law should be placed before populist actions. This has not been the case in Zimbabwe under Mr Mugabe. Large tracts of land in the hands of a tiny white population have been a cause of friction and animosity, for all that these farms have contributed substantially to the country's economy. With a presidential election coming up next year, Mr Mugabe stands to benefit as his supporters seek to force whites from the land regardless of their tenure.
Mr Mugabe has taken to describing the farmers, in a massive oversimplification, as "the British." The message conveyed is that they are descendants of those who expropriated land from the Africans in the first place. The true situation is far more complex. While many fit Mr Mugabe's description, up to a quarter of rural whites, many of them in the troubled Chinhoyi area, are Afrikaners with links to their brethren south of the border. Others have settled in the country since independence and indeed have bought their land from the government.
Some farmers have treated their workers badly. Others have been benevolent, if paternalistic, employers. The one thing they all have in common is that they are white. That appears enough to condemn them to the attacks on their persons and on their property, of Mr Mugabe's supporters. It reflects tragically on the hopes with which Zimbabwe was born. It must swiftly be brought to an end.