SADC and Zimbabwe

The Congress of South African Trade Unions notes Zimbabwe President Mugabe’s verbal undertakings to yesterday’s SADC summit meeting in Blantyre that he agrees to hold free and fair Presidential elections, to allow independent observers and journalists and to investigate reports of political violence.

COSATU is however sceptical about this pronouncement and disappointed that the SADC leaders appear to have accepted these promises at face value. Mugabe has given such assurances before and then completely ignored them. These latest promises will prove as worthless as those he made at the Commonwealth summit meeting on 6 September 2001 in Abuja, Nigeria, and after previous SADC meetings on 10-11 September and 10 December 2001.

Since then he has been pushing draconian anti-democratic laws through Parliament, which:

· Prevent public protests which “cause disorder or intolerance”;
· Ban “illegal” strikes;
· Restrict the rights of opposition activists;
· Outlaw publishing “false statements prejudicial to the state or that incite public disorder, violence, affect defence and economic interests of the country or undermine confidence in security forces”;
· Ban “spreading malicious rumours or publishing information likely to cause alarm and despondency”.
· Make it an offence to insult the President.

The election has been made subject to:

· Bans on voter education and election monitors;
· Rules on voter-registration which require votes to have proof of residence and a bank account, which will disenfranchise thousands of voters, especially the unemployed and the young;
· Severe restrictions on opposition election meetings; · An electoral commission staffed by hand-picked loyalists, which will not be independent. All these measures are designed to make it impossible for the opposition to campaign openly and guarantee President Mugabe’s own re-election.

They not only contradict all his earlier promises but are steps in the opposite direction. Yet Malawi and SADC President, Bakili Muluzi, when asked how Mugabe could be trusted, replied: "I raised that question myself with him. He said, 'It will be done', and I take his word for it." This is not the decisive action that millions of Zimbabweans were hoping for from the regional heads of government to force President Mugabe to restore democracy. COSATU wants to see more than promises. Workers will not be convinced he is serious about holding free and fair elections unless immediate steps are taken to set up an independent election commission, with independent observers, the withdrawal of all the draconian laws currently being pushed through Parliament and a halt to all attacks on political opponents and journalists by ZANU-PF supporters. The SADC leaders should have issued an ultimatum to Mugabe to comply with these conditions or face expulsion from the organisation. Their failure to take more decisive action to ensure that Mugabe genuinely changes his policy is a serious blow to the idea of an African Renaissance, the New Africa Initiative and an African Union, all of which aim to transform the continent on the basis of democracy, human rights and good governance.

If SADC cannot deliver free and fair elections in Zimbabwe, their credibility will be brought in to question, especially since they are silent about the lack of democracy in Swaziland. Unless the SADC leaders face up to their responsibility, there can be no prospect of democracy in Zimbabwe.