COSATU slams SADC leaders

the issue.
“We are worried by the situation whereby there was no serious progress at
the summit, while Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is having a devastating
effect on the workers and the majority of the people.
“Unemployment is over 80%; inflation is estimated to be at 7,635%, and shops
are running out of many essential food and other products. Thousands of
people are fleeing into neighbouring countries every day, in a desperate and
often dangerous attempt to escape the poverty, hunger and political
repression that afflicts them in Zimbabwe,” said COSATU National
spokesperson Patrick Craven.
Cosatu said the latest outrageous attack on democracy was the government’s
reported demand that the Attorney General prosecute Wellington Chibebe,
Secretary-General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. The charges
relate to statements he made on 1 May urging workers to launch mass protests
against Mugabe, and others attacking the government’s “price war” and a call
for a day of “national action in August”.
“In no democratic country could such statement conceivably constitute a
criminal offence,” Craven said
Mbeki claimed SADC leaders had approved the urgent initiation of a process
that would identify the measures that the SADC region should take to assist
in the economic recovery of Zimbabwe.
But Craven said “in reality there is little in the President’s letter to
suggest the sort of radical measures that the situation demands”.
The SADC Secretariat report merely says that “the restoration of the
country’s foreign exchange generating capacity through Balance of Payments
support is crucial: however, the most urgent action that is needed to start
this process is to establish lines of credit to enable Zimbabwe to import
inputs for its productive sectors, particularly for agriculture and foreign
currency generating sectors”.
“These policies, even if implemented, would do no more than tinker with the
massive problems the country faces. The main reason for the lack of inward
investment and the extension of credit lines is not the sanctions imposed by
Western countries, which are mainly directed at individual government
leaders, but the chronic economic instability and brutal political
repression, which the SADC report ignores entirely,” said Craven. – Ntando
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