HARARE South Africa has failed to rein in President Robert Mugabe whose flagrant abuse of power in Zimbabwe is threatening the credibility of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a British lawmaker said last week. (Pictured: President Jacob Zuma)
Contributing to debate on Zimbabwe in the House of Commons last Wednesday, the House of Commons Member of Parliament for Birmingham Northfield, Richard Burden said Zimbabwes neighbours in the SADC regional grouping, particularly South Africa, had failed ordinary Zimbabweans by failing to reprimand Mugabe who is accused of human rights abuses.
SADC countries need to face up to that, but most of all South Africa needs to face up to the fact that, in terms of securing leverage and change in Zimbabwe, its role is absolutely crucial. So far, it has not exercised that role as assertively as many of us would like, Burden said.
South African President Jacob Zuma has been mediating on behalf of SADC in the power-sharing wrangle between Mugabe and his former opposition enemies MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara of MDC-M who came together in a unity government under immense pressure from the regional body keen to contain a political crisis that followed Zimbabwes general elections in 2008.
The comments by the British MP coincided with another report by South Africas opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party which called Zuma a poor mediator in the Zimbabwean crisis, describing the SADC point-man in the Harare wrangle as worse than his predecessor Thabo Mbeki. In a scathing attack on Zumas rather lukewarm handling of the Zimbabwe crisis, DA parliamentary leader Athol Trolip described the South African leader as meek and pandering to Mugabe.
Trolip accused Zuma of standing idle in the face of Mugabes refusal to meet his obligations under the power-sharing agreement with Tsvangirai. The British MP said Mugabe has strung other SADC leaders along as he continued to even violate the regional bodys own statutes. He cited Mugabes refusal to recognise rulings from the Namibia-based SADC Tribunal regarding the constitutionality of Zimbabwes controversial land reform programme.
When Mugabe just ignores and cocks a snook at the decisions of the SADC Tribunal, that is a problem not just for the people whose farms and livelihoods have been taken away, but for southern Africa as a whole and for the credibility of SADC itself, he said. The Tribunal first ruled against Mugabes land reforms in November 2008, declaring the chaotic and often bloody farm redistribution programme discriminatory, racist and illegal under the SADC Treaty. The court also ordered Harare to compensate those it had already evicted from their farms.
But Mugabe ignored the ruling while his supporters have stepped up a campaign to drive Zimbabwes few remaining white farmers off the land.
Post published in: News