(HERALD) Why Western rhetoric can’t sway Sadc
Why Western rhetoric can’t sway SadcBy Caesar Zvayi
SADC once again confounded detractors by unequivocally expressing solidarity with the Government and people of Zimbabwe at the 27th summit of heads of state and government in Lusaka, Zambia. Not only that, the MDC Tsvangirai faction and its civil society appendages found the going tough when they were heckled and ignored by Zambians, with main opposition leader Michael Sata dismissing them as a harem of puppets who descended on Lusaka to sell their birthright.
Many other hired hands the opposition was busing to Lusaka were deported by Zambian, not Zimbabwean, authorities at Chirundu Border Post with a strong admonition that Lusaka would not tolerate sponsored sideshows.
As such, Lusaka, just like Accra before it, shunned the MDC, which is why the likes of Morgan Tsvangirai have to self-introspect to find why they are treated like lepers in Africa when they enjoy de facto diplomatic status in Western capitals.
Those who know the history of Sadc, undoubtedly Africa’s biggest success story in terms of regional integration, were not surprised. It is only lackeys that do not know or have little regard for African experiences who wonder why Sadc always sees through the MDC and the Western designs it fronts.
For starters, it would help such detractors to know that Zimbabwe is leading the fight for economic emancipation in the region, which fight connects with the aspirations of all other member states that aspire for economic independence.
What is more, President Mugabe is a liberation icon; he was there in the trenches with many of the founding fathers and is still leading that noble fight to this day. This is why Lusaka erupted into thunderous and sustained applause as soon as he entered Mulungushi Conference Centre.
His history and that of Sadc are intertwined.
Sadc’s history can be traced to the progressive Frontline States, the first countries to attain independence in southern Africa, which then used their territories to spearhead the decolonisation of the rest of the region.
The founding members, among them Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, helped with training bases, refugee camps and material and moral support for freedom movements.
Thus, Sadc has a chequered history of resisting colonial and neo-colonial domination, and that history informs the bloc’s present engagement with the increasingly rightwing West.
The Frontline States gave birth to the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (Sadcc) following the adoption of the Lusaka Declaration, entitled Southern Africa: Towards Economic Liberation, by the nine founding member states on April 1, 1980 in Zambia.
The main objective of the Sadcc, as evinced by the title of the Lusaka Declaration, was to spearhead economic independence since the majority of countries, with the exception of Namibia and South Africa, had attained political independence.
In order to accelerate economic independence and integration, each of the nine member states was given a special portfolio: Botswana was responsible for agricultural research and animal disease control; Malawi (fisheries, wildlife and forestry); Mozambique (transport and communication); Swaziland (human resources development); Tanzania (industrial development); Zambia (mining); and Zimbabwe (food security).
Eleven years later, the declaration and treaty establishing Sadc, which replaced the Co-ordination Conference, was signed at the summit of heads of state and government on August 17, 1992 in Windhoek, Namibia.
The objectives of Sadc were set as follows:
l To harmonise the political and socio-economic policies and plans of member states.
l To mobilise the people of the region and their institutions to take initiatives to develop economic, social and cultural ties across the region, and to participate fully in the implementation of the programmes and projects of the Sadc.
l To create appropriate institutions and mechanisms for the mobilisation of requisite resources for the implementation of the programmes and the operations of the Sadc and its institutions.
l To develop policies aimed at the progressive elimination of obstacles to free movement of capital and labour, goods and services and of the peoples of the region generally among member states.
l To promote the development of human resources, the development, transfer and mastery of technology.
l To improve economic management and performance through regional co-operation.
l To promote the co-ordination and harmonisation of the international relations of member states.
l To secure international understanding, co-operation and support, mobilise the inflow of public and private resources in the region.
l To develop such other activities as member states may decide in furtherance of the objectives of Sadc.
A look at these objectives shows that Sadc adopted an all-for-one, one-for-all policy in its drive to achieve integration in all spheres of life.
It is also instructive to note that Sadc bears the scars of Western-sponsored conflicts that afflicted several member states. As such, the region knows only too well the ills of Western-sponsored subversive politics.
South African President Thabo Mbeki summed it well in Dar es Salaam where he was quoted as saying: ‘‘. . . the fight against Zimbabwe is a fight against us all. Today it is Zimbabwe, tomorrow it will be South Africa, it will be Mozambique, it will be Angola. It will be any other African country. And any government that is perceived to be strong, and to be resistant to imperialists, would be made a target and would be undermined. So let us not allow any point of weakness in the solidarity of the Sadc, because that weakness will also be transferred to the rest of Africa".
This statement — true to the adage "once bitten twice shy" — shows that Sadc leaders have not forgotten the ruin the West wrought on the region through reactionary elements.
A few examples will suffice here.
Courtesy of the West, Mozambique was afflicted with the scourge of André Matsangaissa and Afonso Dhlakama and their so-called Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo) that brought untold suffering to the country with the support of the United States, Rhodesia’s Smith regime and, later, apartheid South Africa.
Following the death of Matsangaissa and a vicious power struggle within Renamo, Dhlakama became Renamo commander-in-chief and head of the governing body, the 12-member executive council, during the bloodiest phase of the Renamo insurgency.
Renamo’s activities delayed the transformation of post-independence Mozambique. Renamo only mutated into a political party after the end of the sponsored insurgency in 1989 and since then Dhlakama has contested all three multi-party presidential elections and lost out, but not before singing the usual psalm of alleged closure of democratic space.
Mozambique is not likely to be swayed by Tsvangirai’s antics.
Then there was Angola and its long struggle against Jonas Savimbi’s US-backed National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), a former anti-colonial movement formed in 1966 that turned reactionary after Angola’s independence in 1975.
Unita, with the support of the US and apartheid South Africa, launched an insurgency in an attempt to depose the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), in one of Africa’s longest-running wars of destabilisation. Through it all, the US refused to recognise the MPLA government, opting to maintain support and quasi-diplomatic relations with Savimbi, who even met Ronald Reagan at the White House in 1986 where he was hailed as a ‘‘great freedom fighter’’.
The US recognised the MPLA government after 1992, but only after mounting pressure at home and abroad.
The war of destabilisation only ended with the death of Jonas Savimbi, who was gunned down by Angolan government forces on February 22, 2002. To this day, Angola is still trying to come to terms with the costs of the insurgency; millions of Angolan amputees are living testimony of Unita’s banditry.
As such, Angola can never be swayed by Western rhetoric over Zimbabwe.
Namibia, whose independence from South Africa came partly as a trade-off for the removal of foreign troops from Angola, can also not be fooled by Western designs on Zimbabwe.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, whose first premier Patrice Lumumba was deposed, imprisoned, assassinated and dissolved in sulphuric acid in a CIA plot only 10 weeks after taking the oath of office on June 30, 1960, has not known peace since then. In fact, the activities of two Western proxies, Moise Tshombe and his Katanga secession, and Colonel Joseph Mobutu, were the fronts that were used by the CIA to depose Lumumba.
As recently as 1997, the DRC was invaded by rebels backed by Rwanda and Burundi, again at the instigation of the US. This time they wanted to depose President Laurent Desire Kabila. It took the intervention of Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia under "Operation Sovereign Legitimacy" to safeguard the independence and territorial integrity of the DRC.
To a large extent, Zimbabwe’s intervention in the DRC invited the Western backlash that was intensified by the Government’s decision to take the bull by the horns by embarking on the progressive land reform programme, the first of its kind in the developing world.
Kabila was subsequently assassinated, and his son Joseph took over. Joseph’s tenure has, to a large extent, been safeguarded by the solidarity Sadc showed during and after Operation Sovereign Legitimacy.
Only this year, after the DRC’s first democratic elections in 45 years, another Western-backed latter-day rebel, Jean-Pierre Bemba, tried to destabilise the new government, before his insurrection was put down with the force it deserved.
As fate would have it, the time Bemba was trying his war games in Kinshasa, Tsvangirai and his allies in the so-called Save Zimbabwe Campaign had embarked on what they called a "defiance campaign" in Zimbabwe. At the same time, the opposition that had lost the elections in Lesotho had brought Maseru to a standstill with a crippling strike. Because of this, Sadc had to convene an extraordinary summit in Dar es Salaam on March 31 to discuss the peace and security situation in the region.
At the end of the summit, Sadc made it clear that it stood by elected governments, and in the case of Zimbabwe, made its strongest statement yet on the stand-off between Harare and London.
In its communiqué, Sadc expressed solidarity with the Government and people of Zimbabwe; upheld the legitimacy of the electoral process; urged Britain to honour its colonial obligations; encouraged enhanced diplomatic relations; called for the scrapping of economic sanctions; pledged a rescue package to boost Zimbabwe’s economic revival; and encouraged dialogue between the Government and the opposition.
What this meant, in effect, was that Sadc was no longer going to take the backseat as Zimbabwe fought a Western world galvanised by blind support for Britain, but was also throwing in its lot with Zimbabwe in line with the provisions of the Sadc Treaty.
Zimbabwe’s fight with Britain is over land, but the Labour government could not sustain its fight on that basis since by refusing to honour obligations entered into with the Tory administration of Margaret Thatcher, it violated the international law of succession.
To cover himself, the then British prime minister, Tony Blair, concocted several allegations centred on alleged violation of civil and political liberties in Zimbabwe and this is what London, to this day, wants the world to believe is at the centre of its fight with Harare.
The Western nations that myopically bought into this propaganda and tried to use it as a basis to get Sadc to condemn Zimbabwe badly miscalculated because Sadc’s protocols make it clear that Sadc’s position on any matter in the region overrides opinion from any other quarter.
Therefore, as far as elections in Zimbabwe are concerned, Sadc listens to its observer mission, which is always on the ground, and not to hysterical Western nations informed only by their hatred of what they consider "uppity blacks".
This a point the MDC has missed and continues to miss with sickening regularity: Sadc’s opinion matters more than any other where Zimbabwe is concerned.
Those in the MDC have also not understood what Sadc meant by mandating President Mbeki to mediate between them and the Government.
The message Sadc was sending is that there is no need to look to the West for solutions, the solutions lie within Africa, period.
Labels: SADC, THE HERALD
posted by MrK @ 3:59 AM
1 Comments:
Zimbabwe’s fight with Britain is over land, but the Labour government could not sustain its fight on that basis since by refusing to honour obligations entered into with the Tory administration of Margaret Thatcher, it violated the international law of succession.
An excellent and succinct point.
I have yet to hear the Blair administration explain how they legally could stop supporting the 'willing buyer, willing seller' program.
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