Is letting Grace Mugabe go 'ubuntu diplomacy'?

25 Aug 2017

Mpumelelo Mkhabela

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International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. (File, AFP)

In 2013, President Robert Mugabe described Lindiwe Zulu, South Africa's special envoy to Zimbabwe, as an "idiotic, stupid woman" and "little streetwalker".

It remains an unprecedented insult in international politics. Even the unstable US President Donald Trump hasn't tweet-vomited something like that about any ambassador in Washington. (Well, I don't mean to give him ideas.)

Given the fact that Zulu, now the minister of small business development, was not representing her jacket, the insults hurled by Mugabe were directed at South Africa.

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