Summit to discuss crisis:
A SOUTHERN African Development Community (Sadc) special summit to discuss Zimbabwe’s upcoming elections and the Madagascar political crisis will take place in Maputo, Mozambique on June 9, African National Congress (ANC) chairperson, Baleka Mbete said yesterday
Ms Mbete, who was speaking at an ANC foreign policy briefing in Johannesburg, said the Movement for Democratic Change leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, expected to face off against Presi- dent Robert Mugabe in elections later this year, would also be attending the summit.
Although yesterday’s was a party policy briefing, Ms Mbete’s comments hold substantive weight given the fact that current government policies are often hatched by the ruling party.
She was also accompanied at the briefing by Ms Lindiwe Zulu, President Jacob Zuma’s pointswoman on Zimbabwe.
“Due to the fact that Zimbabwe was represented at the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa by Mr Mugabe, where Mr Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara (leader of the other MDC faction) were not present, we decided in Addis that we need a special SADC summit that will focus on Zimbabwe,” Ms Mbete said.
Party hawks in Mr Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) celebrated Mr Tsvangirai’s absence from both the AU and Sadc meetings and persuaded the region to hold elections “as and when the Zimbabweans were ready”.
Mr Tsvangirai insists the political landscape has to be levelled first before an election date is announced.
While the briefing was meant to clear the air about SA’s foreign policy in Africa, a lot of questions regarding SA’s insincerity on the Zimbabwean crisis remained unanswered. Mr Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) has used its liberation ties with the ANC and other liberation movements in the Sadc to curry favour. Mr Tsvangirai, on the other hand, is viewed suspiciously over his Western links.
At a 2011 party conference, Gwede Mantashe, ANC secretarygeneral pledged to “help” Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF to win the election against the MDC — a position Ms Mbete seemed to reiterate yesterday. “The ANC will continue to have relations with Zanu (PF) that it has always had. We think that given the way we in SA have conducted elections since 1994 we have something we can share with the Zimbabweans”, Ms Mbete said.
But Ms Zulu, who also heads the ANC’s communications department denied that her facilitation work in Zimbabwe was biased in favour of Zanu (PF), given the historical ties between the two liberation movements.
Ms Zulu pointed out that from the outset of their mediation, Mr Zuma had instructed his aides to be mindful that there were three partners, signatory to the Global Political Agreement signed in September 2008.
Zimbabwe’s political leaders are looking to the Sadc summit to avail funding for the elections, which are in need of $123m.
Ms Zulu said the loan request to SA by Zimbabwe was still being assessed and calculated.
Political commentator Rashweat Mukundu said the Sadc summit was a huge political statement and message to Zimbabwe’s political players that Sadc expected the elections to meet the basic minimum conditions of fairness and integrity.