Hillary Clinton to meet with South African leaders

Aug 7 2009

After arriving in South Africa on Thursday as part of her 11-day African tour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has "encouraged South Africa to take a leadership role on the political crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe," Bloomberg reports.

"South Africa is very aware of the challenges posed by the political crisis in Zimbabwe, because South Africa has 3 million refugees from Zimbabwe," Clinton said (Zacharia, 8/7). On Friday morning, Clinton met with South Africa's Minister of International Relations and Co-operations Maite Nkoana-Mashabane at the Presidential Guest House in Pretoria to "establish a new formal counsel between the two countries," IOL reports (Mashego, 8/7). Also on Friday, she will meet with former South African President Nelson Mandela and address business leaders, VOA News reports (8/7).

During her time in the country, Clinton is scheduled to meet with Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, according to the BBC. She will "attend a conference with Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi before attending National Women's Day events" in Pretoria (8/7). "She will also tour a clinic handling South Africa's AIDS epidemic and head Saturday to the coastal city of Durban for talks with President Jacob Zuma," Agence France-Presse reports (Tandon, 8/7).

According to the Seattle Times' blog, "Business of Giving," the U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis has "used a visit by Clinton and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) to raise the question of whether U.S. tax dollars for food-related aid to Africa are being spent wisely." The blog examines some opinions that U.S. food security policies take a "narrow approach" and put "too much emphasis on biotechnology," and includes information about a report commissioned by the World Bank and U.N. to evaluate how agricultural methods affect hunger and poverty, rural livelihoods, health and sustainable development. It also examines the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which is a grantee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Heim, 8/6).