Zim student heckles Mabuza

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BY LANCE GUMA

LONDON - Lindiwe Mabuza, the South African High Commissioner to the UK, was heckled by a Zimbabwean student during her visit to Oxford University last week. Mabuza was delivering an address on the state of post apartheid South Africa at Oxford’s Exeter College when an unidentified student managed to take over the question and answer session.
The student is said to have questioned South Africa’s foreign policy in terms of its perceived success in the Ivory Coast, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and yet the Zimbabwean crisis remained unresolved. Before Mabuza could respond, the student declared, ‘I have a present I would like to give you on behalf of all Zimbabweans.’ He reached inside his satchel and produced a placard, on which “Shame on South Africa” was emblazoned.
Although the student tried to walk out of the venue the commissioner asked him to sit down so she could answer his queries. This was in stark contrast to Zuma’s outbursts in London after she was heckled and declared that Zimbabweans were busy sitting in the diaspora doing nothing. Mabuza decided to respond and said, “There has been loud diplomacy from critics of Zimbabwe other than South Africa and what has loud diplomacy achieved?”
The student quickly responded by saying, ‘And what has six years of South African quiet diplomacy achieved?’ Mabuza is said to have angrily replied “Zimbabwe is not South Africa’s tenth province, we will not send our army into Zimbabwe and neither will we apply economic sanctions because we believe Zimbabweans should solve their problems by themselves. Only Zimbabweans can solve Zimbabwe’s problems. “Zimbabweans in the Diaspora must shame South African officials whenever they are out and about making hypocritical utterances of an African Renaissance. I am calling on all of them to maintain the precedent that has been set in the last two weeks,” declared the student, believed to be a member of the activist group, Free Zim Youth. – SW Radio Africa