By Joe Lauria
The surprise Chinese and Russian vetoes provoked unusually sharp words at the staid UN security council as the tensions broke into the open.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States's ambassador to the UN, lambasted South Africa as the main culprit in the failed Anglo-American bid to punish President Robert Mugabe and his top cronies with sanctions on their travel, finances and arms supplies.
Unprompted, he told reporters: "I want to say a word or two about the performance of South Africa.
"It was particularly disturbing given the history of South Africa ... where international sanctions played an important role in encouraging transformation for its representative to be protecting the horrible regime in Zimbabwe."
Dismissing the South African argument that sanctions would derail talks in Pretoria between Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Khalilzad said: "There isn't anything serious going on in terms of the negotiations. The South African effort, President Mbeki's effort, so far, has been a failure."
Praising Jacob Zuma, the ANC president, and retired archbishop Desmond Tutu for their criticism of Mugabe, Khalilzad said Mbeki was "out of touch with the trends inside his own country".
He accused Mbeki of "protecting Mugabe and ... working hand-in-glove with him at times while he, Mugabe, uses violence to fragment and weaken the opposition".
Dumisani Kumalo, the South African ambassador to the UN, told the security council that African leaders at the African Union summit meeting two weeks ago had decided against "any action that might negatively impact on the climate for dialogue". Therefore, he said, South Africa joined Russia, China, Vietnam and Libya in voting down the resolution. Nine countries voted in favour; Indonesia abstained.
Marian Tupy, an analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, said that Khalilzad's criticism of South Africa symbolised the crisis in US-South African relations.
"It is common knowledge in the US that relations with South Africa are at their very lowest ebb," Tupy said. "There is no love lost between these two countries. South Africa has never missed an opportunity to contradict and accuse the US - which did so much to help end apartheid - of wishing Africa ill."
The failure of African leaders to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis has prompted the West to intervene, according to Emira Woods, an African specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.
"I still think the solution will have to come out of an African context," Woods said, but it would have to happen without the pressure of international sanctions on Mugabe.
Woods predicted that Mugabe would not walk away from the negotiating table, even after his victory over the proponents of the UN sanctions, because he is keenly aware of the imminent international warrant for the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan on charges of genocide. That acts as a sanctions substitute, she said.
"Had the sanctions been put forward by anyone other than the US and the United Kingdom", Africa might have backed them and put pressure on Mugabe, said Woods.
But the legacy of colonialism has made it difficult for African leaders to recognise that their own leaders, as well as colonial ones, can be oppressive, Tupy said.
Boniface Chidyausiku, the Zimbabwean envoy to the UN, blamed his country's economic crisis on US and European Union sanctions, which he called "an expression of imperialist conquest".
An exultant Chidyausiku said after the vote: "The US ambassador was boasting about having nine votes and he is a very disappointed man tonight. It's the arrogance of the Americans to think they can rule the world and they cannot."
Zimbabwe was winning the war of independence against Britain, Chidyausiku said.
Tupy said Africa's concept of victimhood and blaming the West was on trial in Zimbabwe.
"Many African countries are run as badly, if not worse than Zimbabwe, and these leaders have even less legitimacy than Mugabe," he said. "To speak out against him would undermine their own legitimacy to govern."
To admit that African leaders themselves were responsible for many of the continent's troubles could undermine the rationale for continued international aid and debt relief measures, Tupy said. - Foreign Service