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'Mugabe not legal head of state'
Radiovop
October 16, 2008

http://www.radiovop.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4148&Itemid=755

The Southern African Development Community has acknowledged in a legal document that it widely felt concerns that Robert Mugabe should not be recognised as Zimbabwe's head of state are "legitimate".

Despite this, SADC has rejected a demand that it should refuse to allow Mugabe and his government to participate in SADC activities, as representatives of Zimbabwe.

SADC was responding to an application brought by the Zimbabwe Exile Forum (ZEF) in August, asking the SADC Tribunal in Windhoek not to invite Mugabe to the SADC summit which was to take place in Joburg later that month.

It also asked that Mugabe and his government be barred from participating in future SADC activities.

The ZEF said Mugabe should be barred because he had not been legitimately elected.

It noted that Mugabe had come second to Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the March 29 presidential election and that the re-run election on June 27 had not taken place within 21 days of the first election, as was required by law.

The ZEF said even SADC's own election-monitoring mission had decreed that the violence-marred environment prevailing in the June 27 elections - which forced Tsvangirai to withdraw - had "impinged on the credibility of the electoral process. The election results did not represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe".

The ZEF said Mugabe had not been properly elected, was not the legitimate head of state of Zimbabwe and should not represent the country at SADC.

In its response, delivered to the SADC Tribunal only this week, the SADC secretariat said the ZEF's concern that Mugabe be barred from the summit "because he had not been elected into office through a credible process" was "legitimate".

But it was also true that SADC had launched a process to resolve the conflict over the elections - under former president Thabo Mbeki - and that this had led to a power-sharing agreement signed by all the Zimbabwe parties on September 15.

So the SADC Tribunal should reject the ZEF's application, SADC said.

Priti Patel, acting director of the South Africa-based Southern African Litigation Centre, which is helping the ZEF with its application, said yesterday that although the ZEF's efforts to stop Mugabe attending the August SADC summit was obviously a dead issue now, its efforts to prevent him attending future SADC events was still alive.

The SADC Tribunal had not yet set a date for hearing the ZEF's plea.

"SADC should be applauded for acknowledging that concerns regarding its recognition of Mugabe as head of state were legitimate," Patel said.

"But SADC's response so far has been woefully inadequate in ensuring a peaceful, democratic transition in Zimbabwe."

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