LONDON -- If it weren't all so deadly serious, one could dismiss the acres of press coverage on Mark Thatcher's arrest in South Africa on coup plot charges last week as merely a product of the annual news-starved "silly season" in the British press at the end of summer. But British diplomats are becoming increasingly worried that the strange development could derail Britain's Africa policy.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has made the African continent a priority for moral reasons as well as for economic and global security.
Mr. Blair is trying to make his mark on history -- after messy interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan -- by pulling Africa out of destitution and misery.
He has set up an Africa Commission ahead of his country's presidency of the Group of Eight nations next year. Then, when Britain also holds the six-month presidency of the European Union, he intends to ensure that the bloc adopts a unified strategy for its former colonies in Africa.
British officials are well-aware, however, that any African perception that Britain is trying to "reimpose" itself on the continent is likely to backfire. They are worried that the arrest of 69 mercenaries in Harare on their way from South Africa to Equatorial Guinea is playing strongly into the hands of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
A poll, overseen by the Institute of Democracy in South Africa, reported last week that 46 percent of Zimbabweans say they trust Mr. Mugabe, up from 19 percent in 1999, and that a majority of those surveyed no longer see democracy as their best form of government.
"Apparently, ZANU-PF is succeeding in shoring up its base with propaganda about the liberation war and land seizures, while painting the opposition as a foreign-backed force," said the institute's report. The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front is Mr. Mugabe's ruling party.
In Sudan, which British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited last month, tentative plans to send a brigade of 5,000 British troops to help end months of killing and hunger in Darfur had to be shelved in favor of encouragement for a stabilization force of mostly West African troops.
The British effort endures, however.
Quietly but significantly, 150 Royal Marine reconnaissance commandos began arriving with their helicopters and boats in Ghana during the weekend for a training exercise that could help release some of the best Ghanaian troops for operations in Sudan.
