Editorial

South Africa’s High Court Friday barred transport of the ammunition, rockets and mortar bombs across South Africa from the port of Durban to landlocked Zimbabwe after an Anglican archbishop argued they were likely to be used to crush the Zimbabwean opposition following a disputed Mar. 29 election.

South Africa’s dock workers also said through their union they would refuse to unload the shipment, a call backed up by the country’s powerful coalition of trade unions. On Friday, the ship, An Yue Jiang, left Durban for the open seas and on Tuesday South Africa’s Ministry of Defense said it lay somewhere off Africa’s west coast.

Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said at a press briefing in Beijing that the shipment was part of “normal military trade” between Zimbabwe and China and called on other nations not to politicize the issue. But acknowledging the resistance to the shipment, she said China was considering shipping the arms back to China

According to documents provided to South African authorities and leaked to journalists here, Poly Technologies, Inc., a Chinese state-owned arms company, was the maker of the arms, weighing 77 tons and worth $1.245 million.

An impromptu coalition of trade unions, church leaders and nongovernmental organizations trying to stop delivery of the weaponry gained an important ally Monday when Levy Mwanawasa, who is president of Zambia and heads a bloc of 14 southern African nations, called on other countries in the region not to let the ship dock in their ports.

“He actually said that it would be good for China to play a more useful role in the Zimbabwe crisis than supplying arms,” a spokesman for the Zambian government, who asked not to be named, said Tuesday. “We don’t want a situation which will escalate the situation in Zimbabwe more than what it is.”