Will the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), which is notorious for its impotence and complicity with the wrong side on the Zimbabwean question, react any differently to the latest crisis?We refer here to the decision by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to disengage from Cabinet in protest against the unceasing, brazen and delinquent violations of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) by President Robert Mugabes wing of the coalition government.
The latest of these illogical and shameless acts includes the renewed persecution and prosecution of Roy Bennett, whom Mugabe has also refused to swear in as Deputy Minister of Agriculture, on trumped up charges.
Zimbabweans know that the country is doomed if the unity government collapses and Zanu (PF, which has been rejected by the electorate, imposes itself on the suffering masses as the sole ruling party once more. The consequences are too ghastly to contemplate. And yet this is exactly what Zanu(PF) is angling for.
In a most un-statesman-like manner upon his return from an African Union Summit in Uganda on Friday, Mugabe practically gloated over the MDCs decision, saying, as reported in The Saturday Herald of October 24 : … you will always get people in any arrangement who are guided by little emotional thoughts and act in accordance with them and who would want things to go their way, and not the national way and not the agreed way.
This is vintage disdainful and intransigent Mugabe who has tyrannised the nation over the years by labelling any opponents and critics of his oppressive rule sell-outs, puppets of the West or his latest obsession, regime change agenda agents. It is clear to everyone else except SADC that all that matters to him and his party in going to these perverse and destructive lengths is to cling to power regardless of everything else, including the will and aspirations of the people he governs.
He confirmed this on Friday when he said the MDC should not expect …that we should now voluntarily, from our side, you see, give away aspects of our authority, we will not do that. They can go to any summit, any part of the world to appeal that will not happen.
The question any reasonable person would ask and which SADC should put to Mugabe is what Zanu (PF) bases its supposedly unshakeable authority on when it lost the last elections and did not get a mandate from the people to remain in power? As Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara has pointed out, Mugabe was not elected to his current presidential term of office but was accommodated under the GPA through negotiations.
How long will SADC slap Zimbabwean voters in the face by continuing to collude with election losers at the expense of a party that they risked life and limb to vote for in the hope of bringing about change and liberating themselves from the bondage of Zanu (PF) tyranny and oppression?
There are no legitimate grounds for SADC to continue burying its head in the sand in order to appease Mugabe and his violent party. It is time to bell the cat by reminding him of some unpalatable truths, such as that it is the losing Zanu (PF) that was accommodated under the government of national unity and not the winning MDC that it now seeks to beat down into surrender as it has tried to do the populace.
Word for Today
“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay.” – Hebrews 10, 35-37
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga