Signs of hope at high-profile SADC summit
Publish date: 19 August 2024
Issue Number: 1090
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: General
Despite local controversy such as the jailing of opposition activists and pressure to move it from Harare, Zimbabwe, the 44th SADC ordinary summit which wrapped up yesterday was of the best-attended by heads of state and government over the past nine years. Legalbrief reports that the Harare summit ran under the theme: Promoting Innovation to unlock opportunities for sustained economic growth and development towards an Industrialised SADC. Just three heads of state didn't attend (Zambia's Hakainde Hichilema, Comoros' Azali Assoumani and Prithvirajsing Roopun of Mauritius). The least attended summit was in SA in 2017 where just nine out of 16 heads of state and government showed up. News24 reports that Claver Gatete, the UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, spoke about SADC's capacity and the importance of working together. ‘The region is home to most of the world's gold, copper, cobalt, lithium, chromium, graphite and platinum and possesses significant livestock and agricultural endowments. We have no choice but to look inward for homegrown solutions including domestic resource mobilisation and innovative financing for climate to sustain our development. And SADC can be a leader on this imperative,’ he said.
Ahead of the summit, Zambia and the DRC were locked in a trade dispute over imports from Zambia, with Lusaka responding by closing its borders. The two countries are both Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and SADC members. However, they are not signatories to trade pacts of the two blocks and, therefore, rely on a bilateral agreement signed in 2015. Lesotho's Prime Minister Sam Matekane, who survived a vote of no confidence with the help of the military last year, left the summit a happy man after the bloc highlighted that his government is on track with political reforms. He was urged to move with speed to pass the 10th, 11th and 12th Amendment to the Constitution Bills known as the Omnibus Bill, to end a decades-long crisis that can be traced back to events before the 2014 coup. The Summit also commended the DRC, eSwatini, Madagascar, SA and Zimbabwe for successfully holding peaceful elections.
In key developments, SADC removed eSwatini's political and security situation from the discussion table of the Troika Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation. But SADC leaders ‘noted the positive progress regarding the political and security situation in the Kingdom of eSwatini’ as presented by King Mswati III. Activists calling for political reforms in eSwatini had urged the SADC to take decisive action to deal with the deteriorating situation in the kingdom. The Multi-Stakeholder Forum (MSF) – a coalition of political parties and civil society pro-democracy organisations – called on the regional bloc to ‘intensify its engagement with the eSwatini Government’ and apply ‘pressure to ensure that the recommendations previously made by SADC are fully implemented’. ‘The time for collegial approaches has passed; SADC must now assert its position firmly and revive the stalled and prolonged efforts to resolve the situation in eSwatini,’ the forum said. Speaking to the Daily Maverick, MSF spokesperson Sivumelwano Nyembe said the forum viewed the implementation of a ‘national dialogue to be of urgency’. The MSF has, for years, called for an ‘internationally mediated dialogue’ with the primary aim of reforming the current political system in the country and ushering in a new Constitution that guarantees multi-party democracy. After the kingdom was wracked by unprecedented violent protests in June 2021, then chair of SADC’s security organ, President Cyril Ramaphosa, met King Mswati III and persuaded him to institute a national dialogue on democratic reform. However, efforts to institute a genuine, inclusive national dialogue have so far been futile.
Civil society from the DRC appealed to SADC leaders to call on all parties to the conflict in North Kivu to respect the ceasefire, international treaties, and an indefinite humanitarian truce. Additionally, they want SADC to encourage President Felix Tshisekedi to engage all parties in the crisis and seek a political settlement. News24 reports that increased violence in Ituri, South Kivu and North Kivu since 2022 has resulted in starvation, mass displacement and crimes, including gender-based and sexual violence. This unrest puts regional stability in jeopardy, entangling neighbouring nations in the conflict and elevating the eastern DRC to one of the gravest humanitarian disasters on Earth. Julienne Lusenge, co-founder and president of Female Solidarity for Integrated Peace and Development, said the problems in the DRC directly affect SADC's development so the bloc must act. ‘They don't have to stand by and watch the dehumanisation of an entire people and the plundering of a member country's resources, which directly affects SADC's standing. For there can be no development without peace,’ Lusenge said. Despite Tshisekedi refusing to negotiate with Rwanda's Paul Kagame, the Luanda Peace Process led by Angola two weeks ago brought Ministers from Rwanda and the DRC for talks.
Ahead of the summit, UN-appointed experts urged Zimbabwe to release three rights activists they said had been tortured in detention. They identified them as rights activist Namatai Kwekweza, teachers' union leader Robson Chere and Samuel Gwenzi, a former Harare municipal councillor. News24 reports that they were arrested on 31 July for demonstrating in support of jailed opposition leader Jameson Timba and other activists. ‘The three were reportedly subjected to enforced disappearance, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including waterboarding’, the statement said. They were afterwards handed over to police who informed them for the first time of the reason for their arrest: alleged ‘disorderly conduct’ during a demonstration in July for Timba's release. A Daily Maverick analysis notes that the ruling Zanu-PF has forcefully cracked down on its political opponents over the past few weeks, arresting, detaining and, in some cases, allegedly torturing about 165 of them, precisely out of fear that they would embarrass President Emmerson Mnangagwa by demonstrating against him at the summit. Opposition stalwart David Coltart, the mayor of Bulawayo, called the crackdown ‘preventative detention’, predicting the oppositionists would be released after the summit. Preventative detention is clearly also what happened in another SADC member state, Tanzania, last week. The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party suppressed opposition demonstrations, and hundreds of members of the main opposition Chadema party were detained to prevent them from holding a rally in Mbeya to celebrate International Youth Day on 12 August. They were released a day later.
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