THE long anticipated meeting between Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko and the rebel leader, Mr Laurent Kabila, is the culmination of months of persevering diplomacy by South African policy makers, from President Mandela downwards.
To make that observation is not to deny the important role of the UN, the Organisation of African Unity and the United States in persuading the adversaries to meet for talks aimed at ending the civil war. South African officials continually emphasise that their drive to help achieve a peaceful settlement in Zaire has been conducted in close co operation with international agencies.
But as a major regional power South Africa's role has been central to the process. It is no coincidence that arrangements for face to face talks between Mr Mobutu and Mr Kabila on a South African naval ship were preceded first by proximity and then by direct talks in South Africa between representatives of the two sides.
Two objectives have under pinned South Africa's diplomacy in Zaire: commitment to end the conflict as speedily as possible by offering to act as an honest broker, while simultaneously encouraging Zaire to get back on the road to democracy.
These objectives, tempered only by a desire to keep in step with the UN and OAU, characterise South African diplomacy in the region generally. They are evident in South Africa's intervention in Angola, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland since Mr Mandela's African National Congress swept to power in the 1994 general election.
Given the fraternal relations forged between the ANC and the ruling parties of Angola and Mozambique during the struggle against apartheid, a natural anticipation might have been that the ANC would use its newly acquired power in South Africa to help the MPLA government in Angola and the Frelimo government in Mozambique crush the rebellions by Unita and Renamo respectively.
Instead, however, Mr Mandela's government played the role of peacemaker in both neighbouring countries: rather than favouring the governments of Jose Eduardo dos Santos in Angola and Joaquim Chissano in Mozambique, the ANC went out of its way to win the confidence of their rivals, Unit a leader Jonas Savimbi and Renamo's Asfonso Dhlakama, and to encourage them to reenter or accept settlements based on internationally sanctioned democratic elections.
In the tiny Kingdom of Lesotho, South Africa advised the young King Letsie III not to persist in his attempted coup against the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Ntsu Mokhehle, even though Mr Mokhehlc's Basutoland Congress Party is known to have accepted help from the security forces of South Africa's white minority government during the apartheid era.
But while nudging King Letsie away from his flirtation with a coup d'etat. Mr Mandela's government, acting in concert with Zimbabwe and Botswana, never ostracised or publicly cajoled him. He was allowed to retain his dignity while retreating from his undemocratic action, a formula which has been applied to Mr Mobutu.
In Swaziland, South Africa's tactic has been to retain links with adversaries while urging them to seek a political settlement consistent with democracy.
South Africa's intervention in Zaire is a repeat on a larger and more ambitious scale of policies honed closer to home. But, with the eyes of the world on its role as an honest broker in Zaire's bloody conflict, the stakes are higher.