A few weeks ago, SADC assembled its so-called Troika in Swaziland to sit down with Zimbabwean protagonists Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai and see to it that the two sides agreed on terms to form a government of “national unity.”
SADC Executive Secretary facilitated the mini summit and was there in Mbabane with Robert Mugabe and Arthur Mutambara of the breakaway faction of the Movement for Democratic change.
Mswati of Swaziland hosted the summit with Mozambique, Angola and South Africa represented at the highest level.
But the man central to this meeting was absent. Morgan Tsvangirai was marooned in Zimbabwe. He could not travel to Swaziland for this important meeting because he had no passport.
The Registrar General in Zimbabwe told the media that Tsvangirai’s passport was issued a long time ago but was being withheld by orders from Mugabe.
So SADC organized a summit to help Mugabe and Tsvangirai to reach an agreement but did not care that Mugabe would not give Tsvangirai a passport.
And instead of turning to Mugabe and demanding that his Registrar General issue the passport to Tsvangirai back in Harare, Mswati sent his private jet to collect Tsvangirai…so that he could travel illegally across international borders.
Chillingly, he was to travel alone on that plane and Tsvangirai, of course, refused to get on that plane without a passport.
SADC did not bring the issue up with Mugabe and chose instead to schedule the summit for Harare. How cowardly!
“The troika summit did not meet to deal with the issues related with how you deal with travel documents to the principals,” said SADC executive secretary Tomaz Salomao. “I think that it’s not the role of the troika to deal with that.”
Why then did SADC converge in Swaziland if they cannot facilitate such minor issues?
SADC, it appears to me, is only good at organizing tea parties and nothing else.
But SADC is an organization that never ceases to amaze me. And nowhere has it shown its ineptitude than in the case of Zimbabwe where it has shamelessly failed the ordinary starving people amid severe humanitarian turmoil.
So the leaders packed their bags and headed for Harare. The Presidents of South Africa and Mozambique were there along with Thabo Mbeki, Angola and Swaziland.
The SADC Troika, once again, failed to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis and has now summoned all SADC Heads of State to assemble in Johannesburg next week to discuss the Zimbabwean fiasco.
But is it true that leaders of Angola, Mozambique and South Africa “failed” to resolve the crisis? Did they try at all?
Meanwhile, people are suffering while politicians are bickering and SADC itself must be held responsible for Robert Mugabe’s intransigence because without SADC leaders’ support, Mugabe would never behave in this manner.
Indeed, during the failed talks last week, South Africa, Mozambique and even Swaziland believed that Mugabe was being unreasonable in his demands but Angola and, of course, deposed former South African president Thabo Mbeki, sided with Mugabe and refused any pressure to be applied on him.
This indicates that SADC has no policy on how to deal with its own errant member states.
And, on Thursday, as the world started hearing about the resumption of violence in Zimbabwe and as other citizens of that troubled nation started killing and eating their dogs to fight off starvation, SADC Executive secretary Salomao finally confessed that, indeed, the power sharing deal signed by Mugabe and Tsvangirai on the 15th September was fraudulently altered before the signing ceremony and was different from the one agreed to by the parties on the 11th September.
As far back as early October, Tsvangirai’s MDC told SWRadioAfrica in the UK that ZANU PF had doctored the agreement to alter certain clauses in the document that was to be signed a few days later. “Despite Monday’s Troika meeting acknowledging this fraud, the communiqu├® released by Salomao after the meeting said nothing about the issue,” said the radio station.
Tsvangirai’s MDC accused Mugabe’s Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, and Secretary General of the MDC Mutambara group, Welshman Ncube, and Thabo Mbeki’s representative at the talks, Mujanku Gumbi, of making the changes to the document without Tsvangirai’s knowledge.
And with all this bumbling at SADC, why should we Zimbabweans have any hope for a breakthrough at the SADC meeting in Johannesburg this coming week?
Needless to say, our hopes currently lie in Botswana’s hands. I do hope that, this time around, President Ian Khama does attend the SADC summit. Knowing his stance on the Zimbabwean issue, his presence there would be quite comforting to some of us even if he were to say nothing for in this short space of time since becoming president, he has said much more than all African leaders combined have said over the years.
We hope Raila Odinga will be watching too; we need all the help we can get because, ironically, it appears to me that politicians are not the right people to entrust people’s lives with.
But above all else, it is my hope that sometime soon SADC will find its feet and turn itself into a truly useful organization. They should justify their existence. Even if they failed in Zimbabwe, SADC must succeed elsewhere not to exist for endless summits while SADC citizens suffer.
SADC must exist to serve its citizens, not to organize junkets and tea parties for its members.
They should leave the business of catering to citizens of SADC who can do a better job.
