25 April 2008
column
Windhoek — YESTERDAY the Chinese Embassy in Namibia said the cargo ship An Yue Jiang, carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe, would not be offloading in any African country and that the cargo would not be delivered to Zimbabwe.
According to the Embassy, "COSCO was contracted by a Chinese company to deliver some weapons to Zimbabwe, which are part of the normal arms trade between China and Zimbabwe.
The relevant contract was signed last year and has nothing to do with the latest developments inside Zimbabwe.
Since the Zimbabwean side could not receive the goods as scheduled, COSCO could not unload the goods and is going to ship them back to China."
This represents a significant victory for union and civil society forces in southern Africa, which united to mobilise against an explosive weapons shipment to a country already in turmoil.
It is encouraging that despite the inaction of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), civil society succeeded where their governments failed abysmally: they rightly put the interests and welfare of the people of Zimbabwe first.
Sadly our regional neighbour has become a country where suffering and hardship are more common than bread, where jobs are fewer than arms and violence is common coinage.
Most SADC leaders (with a few exceptions) have jumped on the already discredited 'silent diplomacy' bandwagon of South African President Thabo Mbeki.
This form of 'engagement' has done little or nothing to change the Zimbabwean head of state's intransigence.
Against the background of what has been happening in Zimbabwe in the aftermath of an election whose results are still not officially known, the 'crisis-what-crisis' approach of Mbeki and other SADC leaders, including our own Head of State, has spurred unions and civil society to action in their efforts to prevent the arms and ammunition destined for Zimbabwe being offloaded anywhere in the sub-continent.
South Africa's Cosatu union set the ball rolling, and this was followed by a admirable spirit of solidarity in other countries to prevent the shipment from reaching land.
Here in Namibia, the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) was poised with a court interdict should the An Yue Jiang reach Walvis Bay, and certain unions, including Natau, also deserve credit for their solidarity in saying they would refuse to offload the ship should it have attempted to dock here.
The protest movement against the arms ship, dubbed by this newspaper as the 'ship of shame', encompassed several countries in southern Africa.
It is encouraging to note that the inaction of our governments vis-a-vis Zimbabwe is not necessarily supported by civil society.
SADC leaders, however, despite the well-documented suffering of millions of Zimbabweans, and a stolen election, post-electoral clampdown and brutality against the opposition, muzzling of the press and arrests of journalists, refuse to accept that things have gone badly wrong in this southern African nation.
In solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe, and not necessarily with any of the political forces there, civil society has made its voice heard in turning around the An Yue Jiang to return home with its explosive cargo.
The Chinese embassy in Windhoek was quick to say that the delivery had "nothing to do with latest developments inside Zimbabwe".
However the concern throughout the region is that the weapons would have been used to bolster the dictatorship of Mugabe against the will of the people of that country.
We commend those union and civil society forces in our sub-continent which mobilised to turn the ship away.
It may seem like a small achievement given the scale of the problem in Zimbabwe, but it will nevertheless resonate in that beleaguered country that there are those in our region who care about the subjugation of others while their heads of state rally behind a man who continues to resist the inevitability of change - at the expense of his people.
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