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Why Mugabe need not fear SADC peers
Raymond Louw
March 28, 2007

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A423117

AS AFRICAN leaders of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) sit down in Dar es Salaam today and tomorrow, they will be confronted for the first time as a group with a problem they have studiously avoided for years — the crisis in Zimbabwe. While President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia — which, like SA, has felt the strain caused by hungry and disaffected Zimbabweans fleeing its political repression, chronic shortages of supplies, poverty, joblessness and astronomical inflation — has indicated a desire to discuss the problem, the rest have tut-tutted and looked away. Mwanawasa followed his foreign minister’s comment that the situation was too serious to stay silent by saying he hoped the SADC would develop a common stance on the crisis in the coming days.

One wonders how his resolve will stand up in the face of the optimism of Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete, who said his five-hour talks with Mugabe had been a "great success" and that the two had "agreed on the way forward, but it is between me and Mugabe" and "we should be given time". Kikwete declared this as he and Mugabe emerged from a meeting where Kikwete had told the Zimbabwean leader that on his latest visit to Europe, "developments in Zimbabwe dominated most of the meetings between me and the European leaders". An angry Mugabe brushed aside western condemnation and said that his critics could "go hang".

It is also to be questioned how far Mwanawasa will get with the development of a common stance which goes beyond "staying silent", in the face of President Thabo Mbeki’s "quiet diplomacy".

Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad has been sharply critical of the South African media, which have almost single-mindedly condemned the assault and torture of Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his supporters in the Movement for Democratic Change. Pahad told the media there was "some credence" in reports that "outside forces" were attempting to effect regime change in Harare. He accused SA’s media of bias, of being "too sensationalist" in their reporting on Zimbabwe and of devoting "massive coverage" to the viewpoints of western governments.

A statement that goes beyond "staying silent" is unlikely to come from the SADC if Mbeki maintains SA’s view as expressed by Pahad — as he is almost certain to — that the current crisis in Zimbabwe could have been averted if Europe, the US and SA had adopted a common approach to the country’s problems.

"The doors would not have been closed" and dialogue with the government of Mugabe could have continued, Pahad said. He was responding to criticism at home and abroad over SA’s failure to condemn Mugabe’s crackdown on the political opposition. "It is not our intention to make militant statements to make us feel good and satisfy governments outside the continent. Only constructive dialogue between the various political parties in Zimbabwe could resolve the current impasse," he said.

Also, SA is unlikely to go along with any action that can be construed as critical of Zimbabwe after it used its position on the United Nations Security Council to block a debate on the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe on technical grounds.

It is also clear SA will press for no action to be taken that has any resonance with what it terms the "megaphone diplomacy" of the west or the sanctions the west has imposed on Mugabe and his fellow leaders. Mbeki will probably go no further than the South African cabinet did when it "voiced concern about the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe" and repeated appeals for Mugabe’s government and opposition representatives to start talking to each other.

Malawi has said that it is too early to take a stand on the crisis, while Botswana, which has also had an influx of refugees, will probably also side with SA’s approach.

So it is almost certain that nothing substantial will come out of the SADC discussion on Zimbabwe.

It will be an opportunity lost to make a decisive move to bring Mugabe up short and give support to those in the ruling Zanu (PF) who want to see him go but who appear to be unable to get their act together.

There is a relatively simple solution, though it goes against everything Mbeki has been insisting on in SA’s relations with Zimbabwe. It is to roundly condemn the assaults on the opposition and the political repression in Zimbabwe and point out the damage Mugabe’s policies have caused to Zimbabwe’s neighbours, especially in the expenditure of millions of rand by governments to contain the flood of refugees from across the borders and repatriate them, apart from the running down of regional trade and commerce.

This should be followed by sanctions that hit Mugabe and his henchmen but have little effect on the population generally — banning their entry to other states in the SADC, and campaigning to have the bans extended to the African Union.

How long can Mugabe remain in power in the face of the condemnation of his peers in Africa, where he would be relegated to a lonely hermit with possible forays to friends in China, which itself might rethink its relations with Zimbabwe in the face of such rejection? Dissidents in Zanu (PF) would be given a powerful weapon to use against Mugabe and demand his departure.

There are some who think proposals such as these can end Zimbabwe’s headlong dive into further disaster. They are straightforward, relatively easy to implement, but from SA’s point of view — in the same way as the treatment of HIV/AIDS was initially — unthinkable.

*Louw is editor and publisher of the weekly current affairs newsletter Southern Africa Report.

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