The SADC Summit, Agenda Setters’ Frustration

21 AUG, 2020 - 00:08

Nobleman Runyanga Correspondent

Zimbabwe Herald

The 40th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government, which was hosted by the outgoing chair of the Southern African re-gional bloc, President Dr John Magufuli of Tanzania, was held virtually on Monday, this week.

The communiqué of the proceedings is out and there is gloom in the camp of all anti-Government elements who hoped to use the event to place Zimbabwe on the SADC agenda en route to the African Union and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

The opposition is at its wits’ end.

Following two decades of limitlessly large war chests from the West and illegal sanctions against Zanu PF and the innocent people of Zimbabwe, the opposition and its hirelings in the civil society organisations (CSOs) were hoping to deliver Zimbabwe to America on a silver platter.

This, however, was not to be. They realised that, despite the opposition’s perceived popularity, it would never win a presidential election in Zimbabwe because of the inseparable bond that exists between Zanu PF and the people since the liberation struggle in the 1970s.

A besmirching and embarrassing campaign

It is against this background that the opposition, CSOs and other anti-Government elements had adopted various initiatives to besmirch Government using claims of alleged human rights abuses.

Claims of human rights abuses are America’s favourite weapon against heads of states and governments, which it chooses to de-pose.

The opposition has come in handy in this evil scheme by creating scenarios, which perpetuate a negative narrative on Zimbabwe such as false abductions.

Many Zimbabweans would be surprised if a major regional, continental or global event, where Zimbabwe participates, takes place without the opposition muddying the waters ahead of the appointed day to embarrass the President.

For example, ahead of the SADC Summit, the MDC Alliance leader, Nelson Chamisa suddenly “thought” of taking a regional tour to sell what the opposition, their handlers and allies call “Zimbabwe’s crisis” to the region’s leaders, a few days before the Summit.

This is the same SADC that they accuse of favouring Zanu PF during election periods.

In January this year, MDC Alliance leader, Nelson Chamisa, accused SADC of being too soft on Zimbabwe and said that the bloc did not understand the nature of Zimbabwe’s challenges.

In view of the foregoing background, it is not surprising that a few weeks before the SADC Summit, activist Hopewell Chin’ono and Transform Zimbabwe leader, Jacob Ngarivhume, abandoned their usual roles, to organise the much-vaunted July 31, 2020 anti-corruption protests which, however, failed to get any takers except for Diaspora-based social media users.

It is no surprise that MDC Alliance vice chairperson, Job Sikhala, a known political attention-seeker, took to staying in the bushes of Shamva and Dema, claiming persecution all in an effort to smear the Government of Zimbabwe and President Mnangagwa ahead of the Summit.

Even the pressure that was being piled on President Mnangagwa and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to intervene in Zimbabwe by questionable political players such as Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader, Julius Malema and former Demo-cratic Alliance (DA) leader Mmusi Maimane, was all part of a well-choreographed bid to build odds against Zimbabwe, so that it would be placed on the SADC Summit agenda.

Is it any wonder that the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops Conference (ZCBC) chose opposition politics instead of engagement with Government?

Just two days ahead of the Summit, they issued a pastoral letter accusing Government of all manner of transgression as its con-tribution to the “Shame Mnangagwa” campaign, which was already on the ground.

It is curious that they named their document The March is not Ended — an obvious wordplay to refer to their spirited efforts to resuscitate and perpetuate the failed July 31, 2020 protests and all that it stood for.

Indeed, the march to embarrass President Mnangagwa and Government is still on as the world heads for this year’s United Na-tions General Assembly in New York next month.

The shameless stunts are set to continue unabated as the US’ local running dogs bend backwards to justify the US President, Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, Robert O’Brien’s unprovoked classification of an innocent Zimbabwe in May as “a foreign adversary.”

Level-headed SADC

Notwithstanding the foregoing manoeuvres and pressures, the recent SADC Summit handled issues relating to Zimbabwe ad-mirably well.

Instead of baulking to the anti-Government elements and their evil schemes to place Zimbabwe on its agenda as a launch pad for further pressure to have the country discussed at higher forums such as the AU or UNSC, the leaders of the regional bloc demonstrated that they were fully aware of the characters and agenda they were dealing with.

The opposition and its anti-Government elements have over-milked the curiously-timed claims of human rights abuses to the extent that they have become predictable even to Zimbabwe’s neighbours.

The bloc, therefore, refused to be used by the West and its local hatchet men in the opposition compound and the CSO camp against their own regional kinsmen in Zimbabwe.

They showed the world that, unlike the opposition in Zimbabwe and in some neighbouring countries such as South Africa, they were their own people who stood for their own people.

This showed its independence.

Instead of being pushed to drive an anti-Zimbabwe agenda, the Summit showed that Southern African countries were capable of prioritising the issues affecting their region and come up with the requisite solutions.

Instead of being prevailed over by Zimbabwe’s enemies to ostracise the country on the basis of made-up claims, the bloc’s lead-ers demonstrated to the world that they were more concerned about the security situation in Mozambique, the Democratic Repub-lic of Congo (DRC)-Zambia border dispute and the illegal and debilitating sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the US, than the dramatised and non-existent crisis in Zimbabwe.

Instead of falling for the wiles of the local opposition and other discredited regional figures such as Maimane, they refused to have someone dictate to them what they should discuss at their meetings.

The bloc demonstrated its faith in the people to solve their own challenges without undue influence from negative quarters such as the West.

People like Sikhala, Ngarivhume and others were expecting the bloc to censure President Mnangagwa over the false claims of human rights abuses as exemplified by the self-abduction case of MDC activists like Cecilia Chimbiri, Netsai Marova and Joanna Mamombe.

They were surprised when he received praise for his outstanding stewardship of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Secu-rity Co-operation, which he chaired for the past year.

They were frustrated by yet another failure of their efforts at setting in motion a process to unseat President Mnangagwa and Zanu PF.

Stung by this, some of the President’s detractors shamelessly claimed that the President had been prematurely removed from his chairmanship of the organ in response to the false narrative of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

One cannot help, but tip one’s hat to the SADC leaders that met on Monday in respect for the profes-sional way that they handled the Summit, amid the concerted efforts against Zimbabwe by its detrac-tors.