The peace process in Ethiopia's Tigray region is an important lesson and marker for Africa and for the entire world, South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor told African media during an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
"This peace process in Ethiopia is a very important lesson and marker, not just for Africa, but for the entire globe. Because we have a conflict in Russia and Ukraine, we have been saying there should be a negotiation that diplomacy must be allowed to play a role," Pandor said.
South Africa has repeatedly called for a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine conflict. Russian officials, in their turn, have on numerous occasions declared their country's readiness for peace talks, stressing that it is the West that has forbidden Ukraine from holding negotiations with Moscow.
According to Pandor, "when people talk, guns are silenced," and when people do not, "you have more arms, you have more death, you have more destruction."
She noted that the lesson offered by the case of Ethiopia is "let us sit around the table. Let’s put our issues on the table. Let us resolve them as brothers and sisters and create conditions of peace in the continent."
She added that South Africa was "very honored" when the AU chose it as the location for the peace talks to take place.
During the Ordinary Session of the Executive Council of the AU, Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen said that the implementation of the peace agreement was "on course," with his country "redoubling efforts to ensure" its full implementation and continuing to expedite humanitarian aid to Tigray.
Pandor also called Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed "a person who is very committed to Africa solving its own problems," underlining the role of the AU in doing so.
In her opinion, "it's very important that the African Union always keeps in touch with developments on the continent and doesn't allow issues to be taken up by external parties, because sometimes those external countries fuel conflict rather than help to resolve problems."
She also called for the development of preventative diplomacy, noting that Africans "must avoid conflict on the continent."
"We have the tradition that we discuss matters, this is our culture and whether there are problems, we sit down and discuss them and resolve them peacefully as nations," she said, noting that "arms and conflict" becoming part of the continent is always a tragedy.
The Tigray conflict, which is estimated to have claimed from around 80,000 to 600,000 lives, broke out in November 2020, when the TPLF launched a "preemptive attack" on Ethiopian military bases.
The TPLF had been the governing party of Ethiopia since 1991, before losing its position to the country's current government in 2018.