Representatives from Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, the National Association of NGOs, Zimbabwe Election Support Network and the Women’s Coalition briefed the facilitation team on the volatile political situation that continues to prevail in Zimbabwe.
This has been characterized by arrests and harassment of civil society activists – notably seven Restoration of Human Rights activists arrested while protesting outside the High Court, Zanu (PF) supporters’ violent disruption of parliamentary hearings on the Human Rights Commission Bill and stalled Global Political Agreement reforms.
The civil society representatives presented several documents with facts, figures and analysis of the situation and raised concern regarding the elections roadmap which so far does not address the need for security sector realignment, fresh recruitment of Zimbabwe Election Commission staff to ensure their independence and non-partisanship and the immediate end of all state-sponsored violence.
In turn the Facilitation team assured civil society leaders of its open-door policy and its commitment to consult all stakeholders on the basis that the issues at stake, particularly elections, affect every Zimbabwean.
Limited powers
However, they noted that the powers of the Facilitation team were limited to monitoring the GPA and to making recommendations on what can be done to restore normalcy to Zimbabwe. Other civil society leaders were simultaneously deployed to Mozambique and Botswana to meet with senior ministry of foreign affairs officials and to South Africa to brief civil society allies.
We are aware that Zanu (PF) too has been on a regional lobby mission ahead of the Luanda summit to solicit support for what appears to be its three-pronged offensive namely, to call for President Zuma to step down as Facilitator, to frustrate efforts to finalize an elections roadmap and to divert SADC attention by focusing on the tired and irrelevant sanctions issue.
State media reports indicate that ‘former liberation movements in SADC’ meeting in Namibia where president Mugabe was last week, have endorsed the call for the immediate lifting of targeted sanctions slapped on president Mugabe and members of his inner circle.
It appears Zanu (PF) is prepared to go for broke by breaking consensus among SADC leaders, abandoning critical reforms and forcing an early sham election, possibly later this year.
The lame excuse for calling for president Zuma to step down as Facilitator is presumably because at the Luanda summit South Africa will become chair of the SADC Organ Troika with the effect that president Zuma will simultaneously wear two hats of Facilitator and Troika chair.
This is a non-issue. President Mbeki was exactly in the same situation when he was appointed Facilitator for Zimbabwe and this did not affect his role. Also, there is in place an able Facilitation team, soon to be expanded to include representatives from SADC Organ Troika countries, which will report to Zuma.
Zanu (PF)’s three-pronged approach is primarily designed to divert attention from the very urgent issues of finalizing an elections roadmap that gives Zimbabwe the only real chance to transform political power to enable Zimbabweans to take their minds off political conflict and focus on innovation, economic development and prosperity.
To replace the Facilitator now would effectively undo much of the progress made by SADC which culminated in the forthright Livingstone Organ Troika Summit resolutions of March 31. For this reason, Zimbabwe civil society leaders are strongly opposed to the replacement of president Zuma as Facilitator, particularly at this delicate stage of negotiations.
Key message
Our key message to SADC leaders meeting here in Luanda is that they should remain steadfast in their call for free and fair elections in Zimbabwe that take place under conditions of free political activity and in the absence of violence or intimidation.
To achieve such an environment, it is necessary that the elections roadmap spells out measures to re-align the security sector, to return all soldiers currently deployed across the country back to their barracks, to finalize constitutional reforms and the referendum and to recruit afresh ZEC staff to ensure their independence, impartiality and professionalism.
Instead of entertaining frivolous arguments for the replacement of the Facilitator, SADC should endorse president Zuma’s work on Zimbabwe and urge Zimbabwe’s political leaders to speedily implement reforms that will take the country in a different political direction.
The bottom line remains that, whether or not president Zuma remains Facilitator for Zimbabwe, given its economic and political clout in the region, South Africa will remain instrumental to achieving political reforms in Zimbabwe. As they say here in Angola, it is Aluta Continua!
Post published in: Politics