Yes.
I'm quick to respond to this one because you raised the issue of Zimbabwe, and we are their neighbours. I happen to come from a constituency that is right at the border of Zimbabwe. We're always accused of not helping our Zimbabwean brothers. We hear from the international community that those in the neighbouring countries must be at the forefront of assisting and resolving the “Zimbabwean crisis”; I put that in quotation marks.
Although we are doing that, perfectly, our policy in Botswana is that you can choose anything in life, but you cannot choose your neighbours. You can choose where you want to stay, but the neighbourhood is a problem. The problem is much bigger than just the issue of shouting and making noise. We are engaging our neighbours very seriously, but the problem is much bigger. Again, to a large extent, there is an influence as well from external forces far beyond the boundaries that we have or that our neighbours have.
Our belief is that at times we have to approach things differently. We have to treat each case on a case-by-case basis, depending on which country we're dealing with. You'll find Zimbabwe in the situation where it has a colonial past, its own history. You have Zimbabweans themselves with internal issues as well, and a lack of honesty from both sides, ruling and opposition. I'll give you an example.
When there were tribal issues, tribal conflicts, in the beginning, and Robert Mugabe massacred about 20,000 Zimbabweans, the Ndebele people on the other side, the Zimbabwean people never said much. They kept quiet. When he went ahead and started to move and to restrict the white community--the “third class”, as he called them--again they were very quiet on the other side.
Now he has gone further, to now become a mad fellow. You are dealing with Mugabe as a person but you're also dealing with the regime itself--the strong secret service that has been trained overseas and the other international agencies that are involved in destabilizing the country. The problem is much bigger than just what you can point to in Robert Mugabe.
It becomes worse if big countries like Germany, the U.K., and the United States isolate Mugabe, say they don't want to talk to Mugabe. You have to realize that you're dealing with a maniac here. When you're dealing with a person like that, and you're not engaging him in a discussion, he could massacre the very same.... What do we do with the refugee problem we're facing? What do we do with an economy that is just about to collapse?
So what we ourselves then do, and have to do, is treat each case as it comes. We have to treat each of them on a case-by-case basis so that we don't run the risk of having civil war again, when problems become much bigger.
In short, we believe in a dialogue. We have to engage our neighbours as much as possible. We're sick and tired of wars. We're sick and tired of rebuilding. We believe, in southern Africa, that we have to engage our neighbours as much as possible, and with respect.