BY TREVOR GRUNDY
LONDON – SCORN AND CONTEMPT for all those African institutions which fail to speak up for the rights of ordinary men, women and children in Zimbabwe in the face of the on-going onslaught by Robert Mugabe and Zanu (PF) marked the end of the two-day SADC farce held at Sandton, South Africa over the weekend.
The meeting ended on Sunday without any kind of agreement on Zimbabwe’s future.
Earlier, an attempt had been made to stop MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai leaving Zimbabwe.
Only pressure from South Africa persuaded the authorities to return his passport so he could sit in the audience and watch the phony ‘president’ and others at the top table discuss his bankrupt, bleeding, starving nation’s future.
At the end of the farce, Mbeki admitted that there was no deal on the table and said that the SADC troika on politics, security and defence co-operation would have to deal with the matter.
The negotiations were held in true democratic fashion – behind closed doors, a total media blackout.
In disgust, Botswana’s new President Ian Khama boycotted the whole thing.
Observers said that his gesture takes on symbolic significance in that Botswana hosts the headquarters of the SADC and that Khama’s father, Sir Seretse Khama, was one of the men who founded the SADC in 1980.
African reaction came loud and clear, with one important voice louder than the rest.
“Mbeki’s approach to the conflict has been driven by two things,” said the respected editor of the Johannesburg based “Financial Mail,” Barney Mthombothi. “His obsession with preserving the octogenarian and his antipathy to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The interests of ordinary Zimbabweans have been lost in the process.”
How long Morgan Tsvangirai can hold the ‘Young Turks’ in the MDC who say that their patience is exhausted remains to be seen.
Not much longer, say exiles in London who refuse to be named, fearful that their relatives back home will be picked up and tortured or killed by a despot determined to remain in State House until his acolytes and sycophants carry him to the grave.
Added Mthombothi: “These negotiations are unnecessary. They are not only a waste of time but, like the Kenyan exercise before them, are creating a dangerous precedent. Autocrats will in future, on losing elections, refuse to leave office simply because they are sitting on stockpiles of weapons which they can unleash on the general populace unless they can cut a nice deal for themselves. That’s not democracy. It’s tyranny.”
Post published in: News