Good leaders will do anything to maintain morale, which is the only apparent explanation for President Nelson Mandela’s enthusiastic assessment of this week’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit. It must be conceded that they did approve the Sappigmou (the Southern African Power Pool Inter-Governmental Memorandum of Understanding, for those who do not keep up with these things). They also managed (with three abstentions) to sign the Protocol on Shared Watercourse Systems. But otherwise there seemed to be little to write home about, much less justification for dragging 12 heads of state away from their no doubt pressing duties on the domestic front. Certainly Monday’s jamboree offered little in the way of morale boosts for the African continent.
The development which the continent would have liked to have seen emerge from SADC was a purposeful decision on the creation of Asas (the Association of Southern African States), which was to have co-ordinated peacekeeping efforts. But that initiative was “deferred”. Transparency not being one of the strengths of SADC, reasons were not offered.
There has been speculation that the obstacle continues to be the hubris of Robert Mugabe; that the Zimbabwean president is busily manoeuvring to be made leader of Asas on the grounds he is the longest-serving head of state in the region. This is difficult to believe. In an African context longevity of rule would be better seen as a signal disqualification. President Mugabe’s disregard for human rights as defined in our Constitution (we refer, of course, to his virulent gay- bashing) hardly qualifies him to head a humanitarian cause. And, while we must be sensitive to our neighbour’s fears of South African hegemony, it self- evidently cannot justify our total self-effacement from leadership roles.
But are we ourselves fit to lead where peacekeeping in Africa is concerned ? Our bumbling efforts with regard to Nigeria must raise doubts. After Thabo Mbeki’s disastrous expedition to Lagos (he returned to tell us that the Nigerian dictatorship was misunderstood) and Aziz Pahad’s equally unsuccessful mission (he also failed to see opposition figures languishing in jail), the military junta is seemingly so impressed by South African credulity that they have now sent their foreign minister here to inform us that his country’s problems are a figment of the Western media’s imagination.
In the absence of a capable South African foreign minister, is it not time President Mandela himself made his way to Nigeria and, patiently but firmly, explained to the dictators there that this was the sort of twaddle he had to listen to in the days he languished on Robben Island? If he cannot get any satisfaction from them, could he not bring principle to bear — as he did so gloriously in South Africa — and ensure the international community does everything possible to liberate Nigeria from its oppressors?
And SADC? They can be left to busy themselves with Sappigmou and the niceties of shared watercourse