{South Africa’s former president claims that his country was asked to help Britain topple Robert Mugabe}<\/p>\n
Tony Blair\u2019s Government asked South Africa to help Britain invade Zimbabwe and topple Robert Mugabe by force, Thabo Mbeki, the former president, has disclosed. <\/p>\n
When Zimbabwe began sinking into economic collapse and political repression in 2000, South Africa and Britain held starkly differing views over how to respond to the crisis. Mr Mbeki favoured a negotiated settlement; Mr Blair wanted Mr Mugabe to go, by force if necessary. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem was, we were speaking from different positions,\u201d said Mr Mbeki, who served as South Africa\u2019s president from 1999 until 2008. \u201cThere were other people saying \u2018no, yes indeed there are political problems, economic problems, the best way to solve them is regime change. So Mugabe must go\u2019. This was the difference. So they said \u2018Mugabe must go\u2019. But we said \u2018Mugabe is part of the solution to this problem\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mr Mbeki recalled an interview given by Lord Guthrie, who served as Chief of the Defence Staff and Britain\u2019s most senior soldier throughout Mr Blair\u2019s first government. In 2007, Lord Guthrie disclosed that \u201cpeople were always trying to get me to look at\u201d toppling Mr Mugabe by force. <\/p>\n
He did not say whether these requests had come from Mr Blair himself. In any event, Lord Guthrie said that his advice was: \u201cHold hard, you’ll make it worse\u201d, suggesting that the idea was never a serious proposition.<\/p>\n
More on The Telegraph <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{South Africa’s former president claims that his country was asked to help Britain topple Robert Mugabe} Tony Blair\u2019s Government asked South Africa to help Britain invade Zimbabwe and topple Robert Mugabe by force, Thabo Mbeki, the former president, has disclosed. When Zimbabwe began sinking into economic collapse and political repression in 2000, South Africa and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000049421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000049421,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11581.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11581.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11581.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11581.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11581.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11581.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000049421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11581"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11581"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}