President Mbeki’s stance on Zimbabwe should be seen in the context of his approach to crises of similar magnitude. We, as Zimbabweans, would be expecting too much from the Mbeki administration, given its track record on dealing with the HIV crisis in South Africa. Mbeki has drawn controversial lines in the battle against the HIV crisis, arguing that poverty, not HIV, causes Aids, thus delaying the implementation of a practical and comprehensive Anti-retroviral drug roll-out to save millions of lives in South Africa. Mbeki’s time-wasting debate on HIV created room for his health minister Manto’s infamous beetroot and onion solution.

Similarly, Mbeki flew into Zimbabwe last week ahead of the Zimbabwe Summit in Lusaka. In Harare, he was greeted by the now permanent scene of heavily armed police and military patrols, long banking and grocery queues, empty supermarket shelves, only to conclude that “there is no crisis in Zimbabwe”. Mbeki’s stance is likely informed by events in South Africa, where a labour driven campaign has seen Zuma ascending to the presidency of the ruling African National Congress.

Bitten by Zuma’s labour powered popularity, Mbeki seems to see Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change, an outcrop of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and students movements, as a threat to the dominance of founding political parties in the region. Zuma’s lukewarm support for the opposition MDC’s bid to have the results released as they are can be seen in the same mould as a celebration of the victory of the people against an encrusted ruling elite that has grown cold to the wishes of the people.

The best we can expect from Mbeki on the Zimbabwe election stalemate is for him to send a ‘beetroot and onion’ envoy who will report that all is well in Zimbabwe, and we might need another round of South African led talks until the next election in 2014. Mbeki’s foreign policy on Zimbabwe is founded on his long and futile ‘quiet diplomacy’ campaign, and SADC’s entire diplomatic machinery is jammed by his culture of denial.