Harare — Zimbabwe has been suspended from the Commonwealth for the next 12 months. The announcement came from the Australian prime minister, John Howard, just before 18:00 GMT at Commonwealth headquarters in London.
Suspension from the Councils of the Commonwealth will mean that President Robert Mugabe, his ministers and officials, will be denied access to meetings of the 54-member organization for a year. Effectively, Zimbabwe's voiced is silenced in the Commonwealth and it will have no representation in the organisation.
The suspension follows the Commonwealth Observer Team's heavy criticism of the conduct of Zimbabwe's recent presidential election. But in its first reaction, the Zimbabwe government said that the Observer's report was one-sided, lacked credibility and had been written before the elections even took place.
Howard had spent much of Tuesday in meetings with President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and the Nigerian leader, Olusegun Obasanjo; their three countries comprised a troika especially appointed by the Commonwealth to review the situation in Zimbabwe and the conduct of the disputed presidential poll held 9-11 March.
Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth came the day after the South African and Nigerian presidents held meetings with Mugabe and the man he defeated in the presidential election, Morgan Tsvangirai, trying to bring the two sides closer together. The talks to try and achieve some kind of political entente between the two sides ended inconclusively, with neither Mbeki nor Obasanjo willing to say what, if any, real progress had been made.
Flanked by his Nigerian and South African counterparts, who remained silent throughout the 20 minute news conference, the Australian prime minister said: "The committee has decided to suspend Zimbabwe from the Councils of the Commonwealth, for a period of one year, with immediate effect. This issue will be revisited in 12 months' time, having regard to progress in Zimbabwe, based on the Commonwealth Harare principles and reports from the Commonwealth Secretary-General."
Howard said the decision to suspend was "at the more severe end of the options available to us." Some Commonwealth countries had wanted harsher punishment for Zimbabwe, but many others will find suspension from the meetings of the organisation tough enough.
Howard's prepared text added that the committee had mandated the Commonwealth Secretary-General "to engage the government of Zimbabwe to ensure that the specific recommendations from the Commonwealth Observer Group report - notably on the management of future elections in Zimbabwe - are implemented."
Howard added that, in line with the Abuja Agreement and the Coolum Statement, the troika committee agreed that "land is at the core of the crisis in Zimbabwe and cannot be separated from other issues of concern."
A large Commonwealth observer mission, dispatched to Zimbabwe in the run-up to the election, concluded in its preliminary report last week that the presidential poll did not reflect the free expression of the will of the people and was deeply flawed. The report said the election had been held in a climate of fear and suspicion.
Although South African and Nigerian government observer delegations concluded that Zimbabwe's presidential election was legitimate, if not free and fair, Obasanjo and Mbeki appear to have accepted the findings of the much more critical Commonwealth observer report, which was immediately rejected by Mugabe's government last week.
The Commonwealth observers reported that a high level of intimidation characterized the run-up to the three-day ballot, which was at times violent and chaotic, with long queues of voters in urban centres.
In an initial reaction to the suspension announcement, Mugabe's information minister, Jonathan Moyo, told Zimbabwe state television that the Commonwealth was relying on a "heavily opinionated (Commonwealth observer) report," which he described as a "one-sided document that lacks credibility and cannot withstand any objective scrutiny."
Moyo said the Commonwealth observers' conclusions were totally out of step with more important reports by other observers and had misled the Commonwealth. It was a "bad report, leading to bad decisions," said Moyo. "We are challenging that report word for word, because it is full of distortions." He claimed that the report had been written "well before they came here (to Zimbabwe for the elections), distorting everything along the way."
Tsvangirai called his country's suspension from the Commonwealth a "sobering thought" and a sad day for Zimbabwe. But he added that it should ring alarm bells for the government, amounting to a warning that it could not continue defying the global community.
With the stick came a carrot from the Commonwealth. The Australian prime minister said the organization would be ready to help Zimbabwe address the land issue and assist in its economic recovery, "in cooperation with other international agencies." He appealed to the international community to "respond to the desperate situation currently in Zimbabwe, especially the food shortages. Howard announced that Australia was increasing its humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe by US$2 million
There was also much talk about national reconciliation being a priority in Zimbabwe and a willingness for Commonwealth to assist in the process.
"This statement provides a path for engagement with Zimbabwe by the Commonwealth and I understand that engagement by the secretary general will start very soon," said Howard.
Before he announced Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth, the Australian prime minister first said: "All of us express a determination to promote reconciliation in Zimbabwe between the main political parties."
He said: "We are conscious of the parlous state of the economy and, to this end, the committee strongly supported the initiatives of the president of Nigeria and the president of South Africa in encouraging a climate of reconciliation between the main political parties in Zimbabwe, which they considered essential to address the issues of food shortages, economic recovery, the restoration of political stability, the rule of law and the conduct of future elections."
So, there was collective Commonwealth disapproval of Mugabe's leadership and government, but the leaders - represented by the troika - clearly did not want to be seen to be punishing the people of Zimbabwe. Howard ruled out sanctions in the near future, saying that was a matter for individual countries, but that Australia was not planning any such punishment.
Howard called their action "an appropriate and balanced response" and a "sensible result" that would meet the legitimate expectation of peoples within the Commonwealth, "that there should be a consistency of treatment," meted out to offenders "in relation to electoral processes that fall short of the Harare principles." He concluded that the result "maintained the Commonwealth's credibility."
Two other Commonwealth members, Pakistan and Fiji, are currently under suspension after elected governments were overthrown in their countries. Zimbabwe's case was being seen as a test for the organisation.
Howard gave an ambiguous response to a question about whether the Commonwealth now considered Mugabe a legitimately-elected president or would advocate a re-run of the presidential poll, a demand by the opposition MDC. "Of course I would like to see a free, fair, open, totally democratic, transparent election held as soon as possible," was Howard's answer.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Moyo made it clear that there would be no rerun of the disputed poll in Zimbabwe. "The presidential elections are over and the next presidential election is in 6 years," Mugabe's information minister told state television.
Suspension from the Commonwealth is largely symbolic, but the penalty is likely to come as a personal blow to Mugabe, one of the organisation's elder statesmen. But, with the Commonwealth guillotine hovering for some weeks now, the Zimbabwean leader is reported to have recently said that he did not care if his country was suspended or not.
Harare came under strong pressure at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in Australia in early March, where Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand tried - and failed - to have the country suspended.
African leaders rallied behind Mugabe, who did not attend CHOGM, and argued that it was premature for any punitive action to be taken against Zimbabwe, ahead of the presidential election less than a week later.
The division among Commonwealth leaders at Coolum in Australia led to widespread reports that the organisation had split along racial lines, pitting determined Africans against the equally adamant West.
Mugabe has accused the opposition leader, Tsvangirai, of being a lackey of Britain and a puppet of white people.
Tsvangirai has rejected the outcome of the election, which gave Mugabe another six years in office. The MDC says Mugabe stole the poll and disenfranchised its voters.
