HARARE – After weeks of regional lobbying and criticism over the bloc’s alleged impotence, SADC has finally convened an extra-ordinary meeting to discuss Zimbabwe’s disputed elections amid faint hope over an elusive remedy to the troubled country’s political logjam.
SADC leaders will this Tuesday also discuss recent polls in Eswatini and the political and security situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In an internal memo to all SADC Foreign Affairs ministers, Judith Kateera, SADC deputy executive secretary corporate affairs confirmed the virtual summit to be coordinated from Angola.
“Following consultations with the H.E João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, President of the Republic of Angola and the chairperson of SADC, I wish to humbly convey on behalf of His Excellency that, the Extraordinary summit of SADC Heads of State and Government which was to be convened virtually on 25 October 2023, has now been rescheduled to take place virtually on 31 October 2023,” Kateera said.
Zimbabwe held harmonised elections in August this year which saw President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared winner with a disputed 52,6 percent majority vote.
The poll outcome, rejected as fraudulent by both SADC and other international observer missions, has also been fiercely opposed by Mnangagwa’s main challenger Nelson Chamisa, who polled 44 percent of the vote.
In a candid report, the SADC observer mission, led by former Zambian vice president Nevers Mumba, said the poll failed to meet benchmarks set by both SADC and the globe for a plebiscite to be declared free and fair.
The report invited protests from both Zanu PF and government officials who singled out the Zambian politician for a volley of verbal attacks and name calling questioning his temerity to break the unwritten pan African spirit of seeing and speaking no evil against a fellow African’s affairs.
SADC’s failure to deal decisively with Zimbabwe’s recurrent political crisis has invited scorn from opposition political parties and civic groups in the region that have derisively dismissed the bloc as a club of elites.
Last week, outspoken South African opposition EFF leader Julius Malema railed against President Cyril Ramaphosa and regional bodies, AU and SADC, for continued failure to call out President Emmerson Mnangagwa over poll theft and a tough hand that has brought fear and despair among millions of Zimbabweans.
Malema condemned SADC leaders for reducing the bloc into a “meeting of the elite without concrete solutions to the problems confronting the people of Africa”.
Similarly, Namibian opposition leader Bernadus Swartbooi has harangued SADC for allowing Zimbabwe’s political mess to persist to a point of affecting the region’s confidence to deal with its political problems.
However, despite the fresh opportunity to spotlight Mnangagwa’s disputed leadership, little is expected from a group of African politicians who have been glossing over the region’s myriad problems with no tangible solution.
Last month, Mnangagwa lined up private meetings with SADC leaders during the United Nations General Assembly in New York with observers seeing it as an attempt by the Zimbabwe strongman to hush wide condemnation over the manner with which he was re-elected last month.
Little is known over what he discussed although Ramaphosa dropped hints almost immediately during intimate company with Mnangagwa when the two launched a new border force in Musina recently to tighten the neighbouring countries’ porous border.
