Zuma to face pressure over Zimbabwe

South African leader will be urged to help deal with difficult neighbour.

European Union leaders will next week call on Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, to become more involved in the search for a solution to political deadlock in Zimbabwe. 

Zuma will on Tuesday (28 September) travel to Brussels for a summit with Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission. The summit is only the third to take place between the two sides and comes two months before an EU-Africa summit in Libya.

The EU expects Zuma to ask the Union to lift the remaining sanctions on Zimbabwe, according to an EU briefing document, but many member states are sceptical that such a move would help resolve a stalemate between Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s long-time strongman, and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. South Africa has in the past resisted calls to step up pressure on Mugabe to open up his country, ravaged by repression and misrule.

Regional agreements

Another likely point of disagreement concerns trade, with South Africa opposing the regional Economic Partnership Agreements that the EU has signed, or is negotiating, with many countries in the region. The South African government believes that the agreements could undermine regional integration in the continent’s south by splitting the area in two. EU documents describe South Africa as maintaining a “committed and assertive developing-country perspective” on various issues.

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