S.Africa's Mbeki urges unity in face of continental problems

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (Reuters) -- Globetrotting South African President Thabo Mbeki, facing criticism at home for his frequent foreign trips, on Tuesday called for national unity in the face of Western pessimism about the plight of the African continent.

He said his frequent foreign trips were part of a strategy to help sort out the rash of conflicts that have erupted across Africa and to persuade developed nations to ease the continent's debt burden.

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"We have spoken to everybody, the United States, the European Union, Japan. Everybody has agreed you couldn't stand by and watch this particular continent get left further and further behind," Mbeki told the South African Chamber of Business annual meeting in Cape Town.

"It is quite clear that the old economic policies in many African states have not worked," he said.

He said the South African government had been called on to become involved in trying to negotiate peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Comoros and in West Africa, particularly Ivory Coast.

It was also deeply involved behind the scenes in trying to prevent the collapse of neighboring Zimbabwe, he said.

"We cannot detach ourselves from the rest of the continent. What happens on the rest of the continent should be a matter of concern for all of us," Mbeki said.

"I sense a commitment on the African continent to deal with these things. It is part of a move to push back Afro-pessimism."

Mbeki said the land, food and fuel crises in Zimbabwe was of particular concern to South Africa.

"We cannot welcome the collapse of Zimbabwe. It would come across the Limpopo river without delay. So we continue to engage the Zimbabwean government," he said.

Mbeki said his government was in regular contact with Zimbabwe about land redistribution, food and fuel shortages and the generally poor health of the economy.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF government, returned to power with a drastically diminished majority in elections in June, has vowed to take over some 3,000 of the country's 4,500 white-owned commercial farms.

Many of the farms have been occupied by land-hungry veterans of the struggle to liberate the former Rhodesia from minority white rule. Zimbabwe became independent from Britain in 1980.

A shortage of foreign exchange has led to fuel shortages in Zimbabwe, and a tumbling exchange rate coupled with inflation triggered food-price riots in several Harare suburbs last week.

Mbeki said South Africa had its own difficulties including crime, slow economic growth, high unemployment, unequal distribution of resources and a collapsing health system.

He urged South Africans to pull together to tackle the problems and to understand what he personally was trying to achieve through his foreign policy.

"It is part of a common national agenda that we address all these," he said. "We are confident that we will make progress on all of these areas, including issues that might very well be outside of our borders."

Support for Mbeki among South Africans has plummeted in the past year, and he has been criticized at home and abroad for his handling of HIV/AIDS, which affects one in 10 South Africans.

Mbeki was greeted with scorn by many in the scientific community after he doubted the link between HIV and AIDS and denied anti-AIDS drugs to pregnant women and rape victims on cost and safety grounds.

His government this week launched a new anti-AIDS campaign and guidelines on how it would tackle the disease.

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