In the week following the 16th African Union (AU) Heads of State Summit, Zimbabweans were inundated by propaganda celebrating the absence of the Zimbabwean Question on the Agenda of the AU. This absence was couched as a victory for ZANU PF, and a defeat for efforts of the likes of The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and other civic groups in their advocacy efforts at the Continental body. Similar assertions have been made in the aftermath of the Extraordinary SADC Summit which took place in Namibia on the 20th of May 2011, complete with celebrations in the “captured” state run press, of the Harare Orchestrated and executed ejection, detention and harassment of Zimbabwean civic activists from the venue of the Summit. This propaganda betrays the peddler’s lack of understanding of the missions of civic society and their intent in engaging regional and continental bodies like SADC and the African Union.
Missions to the AU, SADC and their allied bodies, at least for the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, are meant to ensure that these bodies set a firm precedence in dealing with errant regimes which refuse to leave power in the face of popular sentiments that they do so. In addition, they are meant to indicate how, from a civil society perspective, SADC and AU can avert situations like the Zimbabwean one from becoming the order of the day on the continent. This advocacy is always informed by the fact that Africa is a continent, which is war weary, and in dire need of peace and stability. It is also informed by the sad reality that political conflicts on the continent have claimed more lives and displaced more people than natural disasters. As such, given the fact that political conflict often allied to elections is amongst the primary causes of instability, the intent is to contribute towards sustainable stability and peace through advocating for the respecting of democratic processes and promoting democratization as a process.
In order to pursue such a mission with SADC and the African Union, for a Zimbabwean outfit, it is preferable (due to clear democratic deficits that are there in the country) but not necessary to have Zimbabwe on the agenda of key meetings when they take place. The Zimbabwean question, including circumstances like those from June 2008, which we would like to have avoided at all costs in the next election, can be indirectly engaged through the discussion of other trouble spots, like the Ivorian and Tunisian situations as was done in January by the AU, or indeed through the discussions on Madagacar and Swaziland as was done by SADC in Namibia. As policy bodies, the lobbying at the AU and SADC are around cogent policy frameworks to deal with these challenges, which can be used as basis for dealing with similar challenges. This notion is supported by the movement on the continent towards African integration based on values and common convictions around right and wrong beyond the coincidence of plate tectonics’ and the Berlin conference, which bundled us on the same continent, and artificially divided us, respectively.
In spite of the hot air that continues to blown by the architects of people suffering in Zimbabwe, and the rhetoric and spin from their tired spin doctors and Pages, it is clear that there are significant shifts in African policy towards dictatorship and a growing impatience with petulant long term rulers. This clarity is there from how the Ivorian crisis was eventually dealt with, and the isolation that can be seen where our “Brother Leader” Cde Muammer Gaddafi – Head of State and Government of the Great Lybian Jamahiriya and Spiritual leader of the people, is concerned in the battle for Lybia. There was no elegant, elaborate, face-serving exit for the Gabgo and there certainly will be none for Ghadafi.
In pursuit of the above stated ends, Civic Society has often called on SADC to say something and do something on Zimbabwe, but Namibia was different, and showed us that Silence is indeed sometimes golden, in spite of a raucous and noisy circus being in town. There is a popular saying in romantic parlance, which says, “ you say it best when you say nothing at all”. This saying proved true at the Namibia Summit. The only allusion to Zimbabwe from the Namibia Summit’s communiqué was in noting the presence of uncle Bob. This in itself says a lot in the context of the ZANU PF agenda, which was to reverse the resolutions from Livingston, intimidate the mediator and purge his team. The strategy fell on its face, in spite of the deployment of some of ZANU PF’s heavy hitters in the form of their negotiating team of Munangagwa, Goche and the second guessed Chinamasa, who were supporting their leader. Added to this team was a concoction of bogus NGO’s and Youth militia’s who clearly owed no allegiance to neither the flag nor the constitution, but to the shriveled old hand that feeds them as could be seen from the prominent display of Mugabe’s face (from pictures guessed to have been taken in 1972) on all their clothing attire from berets and jackets to t-shirts, leaving one to nauseatingly wonder about their under garments.
The Bogus NGO Posse were led and comprised of one serial organization former, Goodson Nguni, who this time around was wearing 4 different hats depending on who he was talking to. From the Federation of NGO’s (FONGO) which he formed in 2008, when the SADC Observer mission wanted to engage Civil Society, to the Civil Society Coalition he formed when the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme fact finding mission wanted to engage Civil Society in 2010, to the Association of All African NGO’s (AAANGO) which he claims to have formed in Lusaka two weeks prior to the Special Summit in Namibia, and a new formation which he called Zimbabwe Today, whose main weapon of engagement was a shoddily put together , poorly edited magazine which claimed that all the violence in Zimbabwe is caused by the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirayi.
All the above arsenal fell flat on its face, as SADC clearly showed that they would not be held at ransom by unreasonable submissions from just one of the three political parties in the GPA, which sought to reverse the Livingston resolutions through a cocktail of abuses on SADC, personal attacks on the mediator, threats of leaving SADC and unsolicited lessons in International Diplomacy given by Robert Mugabe – the teacher, and generously carried in the Southern Times, which was turned into a Mugabe pamphlet for purposes of the summit.
By the end of the day on the 20th of May 2011, the leadership of the official ZANU PF delegation retreated to Harare, celebrating their sponsorship of the destruction of the SADC Tribunal in which Chinamasa played the role of Sniper, but still with the specter of the Livingston declaration on top of their heads. By the end of the reading of the Communiqué from the summit and conversations around it and Zimbabwe, it was also clear that SADC was tired of babying a regime that is as old as a person born in April 1980, and led by an old man of 87.
The cost of the failed mission is no doubt being counted by ZANU PF. And now, after spewing vitriol on the South African President, Zuma, soiling the name and repute of Ambassador Lindiwe Zulu and her colleagues in the facilitation team, and calling everyone else in SADC naïve – ZANU PF will now have to do it all again in South Africa in the middle of June and the heart of our winter. There, the Zimbabwean subject will be isolated without the cover of Swaziland and Madagascar.
One can only hope that the region will be stead fast in its resolve not to tolerate hogwash, and stand up to the ZANU PF bullies. One also hopes that the issue of a cogent road map to elections will be dealt with finality, complete with a coherent time framed implementation plan with clear monitoring mechanisms from the regional body. The biggest challenge for the regional body will be to ensure that there are clear demonstrable steps towards the implementation of the SADC Troika resolutions from Livingston, Zambia. That was the call of Zimbabwean Civics in Namibia, and that will be the call of Zimbabwean civics in South Africa.
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