“Any instability in the Sudan impacts negatively on the nine countries that it shares borders with,” Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told reporters.
“South Africa recently become concerned with the flare-up of consistent violence in Darfur, Abyei and South Kordofan,” she said.
“We are not just monitoring the situation. We are engaging. President Zuma will meet President Omar al-Bashir on Friday and all these issues will be on the table,” she said.
She did not say where the meeting would place, but both Nkoana-Mashabane and Zuma plan to attend South Sudan’s independence celebrations Saturday in Juba.
“It is important for South Africa to manage and maintain a consistent balance at the onset of the separation of South Sudan from the North,” she said.
South Sudan is due to split from the north on Saturday, but a number of key issues have yet to be resolved under the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement.
The northern army’s occupation of the Abyei border region and its war against southern-aligned rebel militiamen in South Kordofan, the north’s only oil-producing state, have drawn sharp criticism from world leaders.