ZIMBABWE: SADC steps into the fray

An extraordinary summit of the 14-member state Southern African Development Community (SADC) is being scheduled for the weekend of 12 April, to discuss the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe following last month's elections.

SADC said in a statement that Zambian president and current chairman of the regional body, Levy Mwanawasa, was "consulting with his fellow heads of state and government" on holding the meeting. 

The planning come in the wake of mounting international condemnation of Zimbabwe's failure to publish the results of the 29 March presidential poll, which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claim President Robert Mugabe lost, and their leader Morgan Tsvangirai won.

Moeletsi Mbeki, a political economist and the deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs, an independent think-tank based in Johannesburg, said it was unlikely the extraordinary summit would resolve Zimbabwe's crisis.

"SADC has given ZANU-PF [Zimbabwe's ruling party] comfort to do what it is doing," he told IRIN.

He said the MDC was not just a threat to ZANU-PF, but also to SADC as it was representative of civil society and most governments in southern Africa were "nationalist parties, created by black elites during the colonial era, who saw themselves as colonial equals. They see themselves as superior to the black masses."

Mbeki said SADC, of which Angola's MPLA government and South Africa's ruling ANC party were the regional body's power brokers, had been "ganging-up against the MDC coming to power" and they were unlikely to "take any action against Mugabe" at the summit.

The summit was, Mbeki said, not a reaction to Zimbabwe's problems, but probably a response to pressure from donor nations, "as they [SADC governments] are very aid dependent, so they are susceptible to pressure".

South African President Thabo Mbeki was appointed mediator last year by SADC  in talks between ZANU-PF and MDC to agree the conditions for free and fair polls in Zimbabwe. In one of his few public pronouncements since the March ballot, President Mbeki has urged patience.

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, reportedly said on 9 April in Brussels that, "One thing should be made very clear to Mr Mugabe and his entourage: the people of Zimbabwe want a change ... They want democracy, they want freedom."

Australia, the United Nations, Britain and the United States have also called for the immediate release of the presidential results.

ZANU-PF has been in power since Zimbabwe won its independence from Britain in 1980, but lost its majority for the first time in parliament following the recent poll. The MDC has resorted to the courts to force the release of the presidential results and the presiding judge reportedly said on 9 April he would release his findings on 14 April.

Tendai Biti, MDC secretary-general, told a media briefing in the capital Harare on 8 April that there was "a deafening silence by our brothers and sisters in the region, in the African Union."

"We [Africa] responded poorly in Rwanda and a million people were killed (in the 1994 genocide)," Biti said. "I say don't wait for dead bodies on the streets of Harare."