PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela has laid his considerable prestige on the line by intervening in the Zairean civil war as an honest broker seeking to promote peace.
If he succeeds, his reputation as a peace maker - forged in the fires of South Africa's protracted strife and reinforced by his constructive role in helping to end violent discord in Angola and Mozambique and preventing it in Lesotho - will be enhanced.
If he fails, the public will be reminded of the rebuff he received from the Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha in November 1995 when he tried to forestall the execution of Nigeria dissident leader Mr Ken Sarowiwa.
The presence of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki at the OAU summit meeting in Lome, Togo, yesterday, is one sign of South Africa's - and Mr Mandela's - at tempt to end the conflict which is threatening to tear Zaire apart.
The message from Mr Mandela which Mr Mbeki gave to Zaire's ailing President Mobutu Sese Seko in Kinshasa, Zaire, last weekend is another. The communique informed Mr Mobutu that the Zairean rebel leader, Mr Laurent Kabila, was no longer insisting on face to face talks with him as a condition for peace negotiations, a change of tack which might have advanced the start of settlement discussions.
Senior government sources, however, stressed that the origins of these initiatives by Mr Mandela's government stretch back for months, even years.
Late last year Mr Mbeki interrupted a visit to Paris to travel to Nice to confer with Mr Mobutu and win his confidence about South Africa's bona fides.
Before that the Foreign Minister, Mr Alfred Nzo, went to Burundi on behalf of the OAU's central organ for conflict resolution in a bid to contain conflict there and prevent it from spilling over into neighbouring states, including Zaire.
At the beginning of the year South Africa hosted proximity talks between delegates of Zaire's warring parties in Cape Town and Pretoria, as well as representatives of African states and the US. In tandem with that initiative Mr Mandela received Mr Kabila and Mr Mobutu's special envoy, Mr Honore Ngbanda Nzamboe, at his Johannesburg home.
However, Mr Chris Landsberg, a researcher with the Johannesburg based Centre for Policy Studies, offered a different (but not contradictory) perspective.
He traced South Africa's more, focused intervention as a peacemaker to two events the rejection by Mr Mandela of the notion of an African crisis response force mooted by the former US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, during his African tour last November and the election last year of Mr Mandela as chairperson of the Southern African Development Committee.
The first forced South Africa to offer an alternative to Mr Christopher's crisis response force it came in the form of a more visible and determined diplomatic drive to bring the feuding parties in Zaire to the negotiating table.
The second helped overcome Mr Mandela's reluctance to assume too active a role in the subcontinent least he be accused of using South Africa's status as the dominant regional power to impose solutions on neighbouring states. His election served as a sign that the states wanted South Africa to assume responsibility commensurate with its power and influence.