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Zimbabwe: Civic groups want SADC leaders to push Mugabe to implement UN report
ZimOnline
August 18, 2005

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=10398

GABORONE -- Southern African civic society groups on Wednesday called on regional leaders to pressure President Robert Mugabe and his government to accept and implement findings and recommendations of a United Nations (UN) report on its controversial urban clean-up campaign.

In a communiqué handed to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) at the body's ongoing heads of state summit in the Botswana capital, the civic groups called on Harare , "to accept the findings and recommendations of the UN Special Envoy to Zimbabwe on Operation Murambatsvina ( Harare 's codename for its clean-up exercise), to immediately commence scrupulous implementation of such recommendations."

But the civic groups that had to hand their petition to the secretariat after being barred from directly addressing the summit on the Zimbabwe situation immediately expressed doubt SADC leaders would act on Zimbabwe, accusing them of reluctance to confront Mugabe head on.

"In the past, they (leaders) pretended that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe . But now they acknowledge that there is a problem but are reluctant to discuss it," SADC Non-governmental Organisations' spokesperson Tor Olsen told ZimOnline.

Zimbabwe is grappling its worst ever political and economic crisis blamed by many on economic mismanagement and repression by Mugabe and his government. Fuel, food, essential medical drugs, electricity and hard cash is in short supply in Zimbabwe , now in its sixth straight year of economic recession.

Mugabe denies ruining Zimbabwe saying the country's economic problems were because of sabotage by Britain and its western allies in a bid to punish his government form seizing land from whites and giving it over to landless blacks.

SADC executive secretary Prega Ramsay and Botswana President Festus Mogae, who is the regional bloc's incoming chairman, told the Press earlier this week that the organisation would not discuss Zimbabwe because it was not a regional problem.

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