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SADC not doing enough on Zim
Zimbabwe Youth Forum
November 10, 2008

Youth Forum is greatly disturbed by the outcome of the extra-ordinary SADC Summit held in South Africa last Sunday. Surely their approach to the Zimbabwean political stalemate was very casual and poor in accordance with the Zimbabwean peoples' expectations. The summit simply endorsed Mugabe's proposal as forwarded by Thabo Mbeki, the dismal mediator.

Knowing very well the importance of the ministry of Home Affairs to this country considering that it is the one which presides over elections, the main cause of the political crisis facing the country and the police which has been at the fore-front of perpetrating human rights abuses which has further worsened the political crisis in the country.

Obviously such a ministry is not supposed to be in the hands of a vagrant party which has abused it since assumption of power in 1980 to thwart its opponents. As evidenced by the Gukurahundi atrocities, the killing and brutalization of MDC supporters since 200 to mention a few.

Furthermore the regime is in control of defense which is even more powerful. It boggles the mind as to why the defence ministry cannot as well be shared if the idea of sharing control of the ministries is feasible.

The summit was openly biased towards Robert Mugabe. Instead of mediating between the warring parties they simply gave a ruling against Morgan Tsvangirai. The Summit even refused to address other sticking points such as sharing provincial governors' posts.

We also feel that the summit was not treated with the seriousness which it deserves, with only five heads of state present, proving that either they felt it was not urgent to attend or they were afraid to take Robert Mugabe head on. This shows the highest levels of ineffectiveness on the part of SADC. This is mainly as a result of the liberation war hero mentality held by most of the African dictators who are members to the stated "paper tiger."

This also shows the consistence of SADC in protecting Mugabe in all his tyranny since 1980, the body only started recently to accept that there is a crisis in the country after thousands of people had perished at the hands of Mugabe regime. SADC and AU have always maintained that the elections in Zimbabwe were free and fair whenever they supervised them since 1980. As Youth Forum we feel the AU does not have the capacity to solve the impasse in this country since it is just a mere extension of SADC. It considers the past more than the present just like SADC. According to these bodies if one did not play an active role in the liberation struggle he/she does not matter.

As a way foward the Youth Forum maintains that the solution is not in the negotiators alone. It is indeed in the generality of the people of Zimbabwe, particularly the youths. We take this advantage to hail NCA in their street protests, which prevailed today across the country. Youth Forum is also in the advanced stages of making their voice heard again on the streets by the beginning of next week.

The regime cannot be allowed to continue buying time at the pace they are doing it. We insist that all democratic forces should stand up and abandon the wait and see approach. We also urge MDC to consider coming back to the trenches since the table has failed to materialize.

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