SPLM asks Mbeki’s advice on “double apartheid”

Meanwhile, SPLM leader John Garang said at the weekend, after talks in Johannesburg with South African President Thabo Mbeki, that if the Khartoum government and opposition groups did not reach an agreement soon, the country would collapse totally. “We are now living in a double apartheid era, based on race and religion. Our struggle is for liberation, basic human rights and equality for women,” the South African Press Agency (SAPA) quoted him as saying.

Sources close to Mbeki said that, while South Africa had not taken any concrete steps in the peace process and it was primarily a Sudanese responsibility to resolve the country’s problems, it was supporting efforts to “promote peace resolutions”, SAPA reported. Sudan was expected to feature prominently on South Africa’s foreign policy agenda once the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo was resolved, the report added.