DAR ES SALAAM: Cajoling diamond dealers in Antwerp, pressing for peace in strife-torn Ivory Coast and building bridges at a central African summit, Thabo Mbeki has a schedule that only the busiest diplomat could love.
The South African president has logged thousands of air miles, held dozens of meetings and pressed countless palms in the past week, putting him squarely on the map as a global statesman and Africa's most effective champion abroad.
"South Africa is the first country in sub-Saharan Africa that can think and act globally," said Professor John Stremlau of Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand. "Mbeki is becoming the world's first go-to guy for Africa."
Mbeki, who led his ruling African National Congress (ANC) to a 70 percent victory in polls in April to win a second and final term, makes no secret of his broader aspirations, reminding South Africans that their fate remains tied to that of the vast, poverty-stricken and often unstable continent to the north.
"Time has come when none of our countries can be prosperous unless all of us prosper," Mbeki said at recent independence anniversary celebrations in Zambia - yet another of the foreign commitments that critics fear distract him from South Africa's own problems.
Chief among his tasks now is the crisis in Ivory Coast, which plunged into fresh violence after President Laurent Gbagbo's forces bombed the rebel-held north in early November, breaking an 18-month truce and killing nine French soldiers.
Named by the African Union (AU) as mediator, Mbeki has hastily set up meetings with all the main protagonists. But other concerns crowd his agenda. Mbeki jetted in for Friday's summit in Tanzania hoping to solve on one of Africa's bloodiest conundrums - instability in the Great Lakes region in Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda.
CLOSER TO HOME?: Mbeki's tireless travels took him to Europe last week, becoming the first South African president to make an official visit to the European Union in Brussels since apartheid ended in 1994. He pushed for more help for the world's poorest continent.
He took time out to meet the diamond industry in Antwerp - promoting South African-sponsored clean trade rules - and told the European Parliament his government was not going to intervene to weaken the strong rand currency.
Unlike his predecessor anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, Mbeki's globe-trotting efforts on Africa's behalf have not been without their critics at home. Opposition figures, and increasingly members of the ANC's own ruling coalition, accuse him of not acting strongly enough to end the political and economic crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe, which critics blame on President Robert Mugabe.
Mbeki has also come under criticism for the ANC's own policies, including a black economic empowerment programme which some analysts say has turned into a patronage system for ANC stalwarts rather than a real drive to bring the black majority into an economy still largely in white hands.
"President Thabo Mbeki is doing an extraordinary job as a peacemaker and diplomat and a marketer of the African continent," commentator Max du Preez said in an article."(But he) is spending his energies externally while internally things are going horribly wrong. Mbeki's party and its leadership are rotting beneath him, morally speaking, while he is negotiating deals in Africa and Europe."
ASPIRATIONS: Mbeki has also offered his diplomacy further afield, specifically in the Middle East, where South Africans hope their own country's peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy can be a model for bringing Israelis and Palestinians closer.
Mbeki recently hosted Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and his diplomats have maintained close links with Palestinian authorities. Some analysts expect a South African overture to Iran next - motivated in part, they say, by Pretoria's growing hopes that it may eventually be tapped for a seat in an expanded United Nations Security Council.
"South Africa would like to get an African mandate (to join the Security Council), as a good representative of Africa, and Mbeki is doing that," said Professor Shadrack Gutto, head of the Centre for African Renaissance Studies at the University of South Africa.
Mbeki has already put his country's military muscle to work in the region, committing South African peacekeepers to Burundi and Congo, and vowing to support African efforts to help bring an end to the crisis in Sudan's western Darfur region. And while he often works hand in hand with Africa's other pre-eminent statesman, Nigeria's President Olesegun Obasanjo, it is increasingly Mbeki who wins the headlines and makes the deals, putting him centre-stage as Africa's leading statesman. -Reuters
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