The Botswana Congress Party youth league president, Lotty Manyapetsa, has dismissed the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as impotent and useless, and called for the institution to be scrapped of the charts because it adds to the continent’s woes.
At a SADC Summit last week in Luanda were the infamous Swazi monarch, King Mswati II, Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe and Malawi president Bingu wa Mutharika, accused of brutal oppression and human rights violations in their respective nations.“In Swaziland a certain Mswati is every year marrying young and immature girls trampling on the rights of women while in Zimbabwe president Mugabe and Malawi president Bingu wa Mutharika continue to kill and oppress dissenting voices with member countries remaining mum over these violations,” declared the BCPYL president at a political rally at the Gaborone bus rank on Thursday.
“You can not condemn acts of violence and other means of brutality and at the same time sleep, sit and smile next to perpetrators of such crimes,” Manyapetsa added, referring to the implicated leaders who attended the meeting.
He called for the dissolution of the institution because member countries are not acting in good faith to rein in wayward signatories.
“Against this backdrop, I explicitly call for the disbanding of the organization because it has brought us nothing in the region but shame,” he denounced SADC, to the excitement of the audience who attended the meeting.
The region’s power house, South Africa, was also painted with the same brush.
Manyepetsa criticised President Zuma as another kind because of his unceasing appetite for women and his dancing Zulu skills while his country is under siege.
“We learn he summoned Malema to his side, pressurized him to submit an apology against his latest comments against Botswana. But this is unacceptable and kills the democratic values with which, as a region, we wish to traverse,” he said, adding that, however, “we are committed to his cause and have endorsed his statement”.
