Paul Fauvet
20 April 2008
Port Louis — Contrary to claims made in the Zimbabwean government-controlled media, last week's emergency summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), held in Lusaka, had nothing to do with the British government, SADC Executive Secretary Tomas Salomao told reporters on Saturday night.
The Zimbabwean government mouthpiece, the daily "Herald" newspaper, has, over the past few days, hurled abuse at the chairperson of SADC, the Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa.
Thus on Saturday a rambling opinion article signed by Nathaniel Manheru (generally assumed to be the pen name of George Chiramba, an official spokesperson for President Robert Mugabe) claimed that the Lusaka summit was some kind of Anglo-Zambian conspiracy against Zimbabwe.
Manheru claimed "What took place in Lusaka clearly was an Anglo-Zambian arrangement which sought but failed to get a SADC patent". He even alleged that a draft communiqué from the meeting was drawn up in Whitehall.
Zimbabwean ministers had earlier in the week denounced Mwanawasa for calling the summit. The Minister of Rural Housing and Social Amenities, Emmerson Mnangagwa (who led the Zimbabwean delegation to Lusaka, after Mugabe snubbed the summit) claimed that Mwanawasa violated procedures by not consulting with member states first.
Mngagagwa was particularly irritated that Mwanawasa had seen fit to invite the other candidates in the Zimbabwean presidential election, Morgan Tsvangirai and Simba Makoni, to Lusaka. This was "a dangerous precedent", he claimed.
To back up claims that the British government was behind the Lusaka summit, a forged letter supposedly from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to Tsvangirai featured prominently in Thursday's issue of "The Herald". Brown had allegedly told Tsvangirai that Britain would use diplomatic means to ensure that SADC was more directly involved in the Zimbabwean election dispute.
The Zimbabwean Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, seized on the forgery as proof that Britain was the driving force behind the Lusaka summit. "It is evident that the extraordinary SADC summit was held at the behest of the British", said Chinamasa.
Salomao, however, when questioned about such allegations insisted that the summit was a legitimate SADC gathering. He pointed out that Mwanawasa had consulted with Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, chairperson of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, and the two of them had agreed that an emergency summit should be held in Lusaka.
When the leaders gathered in Lusaka, there was a quorum, as established by the SADC treaty, said Salomao, and so the summit went ahead.
"When we hold a summit, our heads of state are not guided by any requests made by anybody else", added Salomao. He insisted that Lusaka was indeed "a SADC summit of heads of state and government".
There was no question of the British organizing a SADC meeting, he insisted. "Perhaps some of the SADC heads of state did talk with Gordon Brown", Salomao added. "But what's the problem with that?" At last year's summit in Tanzania, some leaders were known to have spoken beforehand with western leaders including from Britain and Germany. Salomao could not see anything wrong with such discussions.
As for the Chinese ship carrying weaponry for Zimbabwe, which South African dockworkers refused to unload on Friday at the port of Durban, Salomao could not confirm that it was on its way to any other SADC port. He could not comment on the matter until there was some official information available.
Nonetheless, he pointed out that weaponry for the Swazi armed forces is unloaded at Maputo, for the Botswana defence force in the central Mozambican port of Beira, and nobody has complained.
Asked whether Zimbabwe was respecting the recommendations from the Lusaka summit, Salomao said that Zimbabwean opposition parties (including both factions of the Movement for Democratic Change, MDC) had confirmed to SADC that they had been invited to observe the recount of votes in 23 contested constituencies. Based on that, SADC had sent a team of around 60 observers to watch the controversial recount.
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