Maputo — The Executive Secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Tomas Salomao, on Thursday stressed that South African Home Affairs Minister Nkosozana Dlamini-Zuma, who is running for Chairperson of the African Union Commission, is the candidate not just of South Africa, but of all of SADC.

One of the main tasks facing the summit of African Union heads of state this weekend in Addis Ababa is to elect the Chairperson of the Commission. The current Chairperson, Jean Ping of Gabon, is standing for a second four year term, and is known to have strong support in Central and West Africa.

Dlamini-Zuma is challenging him, with the full backing of SADC. She was a militant in the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1970s and 80s. After the end of apartheid she was Health Minister and then Foreign Minister, before taking up her current post of Home Minister.

Speaking to Mozambican reporters who are covering the AU summit, Salomao said that, under the AU statutes, African regions have the right to put forward candidates for posts on the Commission.

Indeed, in 2008, Ping faced opposition from two other candidates - one of these, Inonge Lewanika of Zambia was from SADC, but was relatively little known. His other opponent was Osman Abdouleh Conteh of Sierra Leone. Backed by the Economic Community of Central African States, Ping won the necessary two thirds majority on the first round of voting.

Salomao stressed that the last SADC summit, held in Luanda last year, unanimously backed Dlamini-Zuma as the region's candidate.

"She was endorsed by the summit, and if anyone had reservations about her they should have been raised then", he added. What SADC member states should have done since that decision "was to campaign for her and her manifesto".

He stressed Dlamini-Zuma's experience in foreign affairs, and her deep knowledge of the AU - at times, during her tenure as South African foreign minister, she had chaired the AU Council of Ministers.

Salomao said that this was not an attack on Ping. "No-one is suggesting that Jean Ping hasn't worked", he said. Instead, SADC was simply playing by the AU rules and letting "the democratic game" unfold.

As for Dlamini-Zuma's ideas for how the continent should develop, Salomao said her programme envisages a future "where the AU member states and the AU Commission hold the decision making powers in African matters and are less dependent on the outside world".

That was a vision of an Africa that would no longer be constantly associated with "conflicts, coup d'etats, poverty and corruption - an Africa that will be able to use its resources to embark on a new path of development".

SADC diplomats have been lobbying behind the scenes for Dlamini-Zuma, but the results of their work will only be known on Monday. The election is by secret ballot - which raises the possibility of countries promising one thing when approached, but doing the opposite when they fill out their ballot paper.

The AU Commission is the Secretariat of the Union, with executive functions. It consists of a Chairperson, a Deputy Chairperson and eight commissioners.