Ivor Powell predicts that sparks will fly at the SADC summit when member states discuss the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security
All has not been well for some time now in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). But things could get a lot worse at the regional conference’s annual summit in Mauritius this weekend.
Not only will the SADC have to deal with the divisive issue of member states’ involvement in the Great Lakes crisis, but they will also finally be forced to confront a constitutional issue that has been threatening to tear the organisation apart for more than two years: that of its Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, or as it is more commonly known, not without double entendre, “Mugabe’s Organ”.
At one level, issues around the organ are brain-numbingly scholastic. Constituted – if indeed it has been properly constituted, since it has to date neither been functioning nor formally introduced into the 1992 SADC treaty – through the communiqu of the 1996 SADC summit in Gaborone, the organ was established to deal with issues relating to regional and interstate defence and security.
In this role it was to function essentially in parallel with the SADC, whose major focus was construed as being on economic and developmental co-operation among member states.
This was because of the perception that the economic and developmental work could be compromised by potentially messy involvement in conflicts within or between member states.
But here lies the rub. In order to drive as thick a wedge as possible between the SADC and the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, the latter was mandated to function independently and at summit level, with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe appointed as its first annually rotating chair.
The formulation left the big question begging: does this mean the organ functions entirely outside the SADC (as Mugabe argues), or is it maintained under the SADC treaty and placed under the auspices of the summit (as South Africa interprets it)?
The question could in theory be answered in Mauritius this weekend. After an extraordinary SADC summit in Maputo on March 2 failed to thrash out the issue, a troika of member states – Namibia, Mozambique and Malawi – was mandated to devise solutions for discussion at the coming summit.
But there is a longer history. At last year’s Blantyre summit, new SADC chair President Nelson Mandela broke into the usually calm, well-fed and self- congratulatory dream world of the SADC with a pointedly political speech, lambasting certain member states for the rift between rhetoric and reality on issues like democracy and human rights.
Though no countries were mentioned by name, it was obvious from the text that some embarrassingly frank observations were being made about Mugabe, as well as Zambia’s President Frederick Chiluba, among others.
Apparently perceiving this not only as an affront to his dignity but as an invasion of the political preserve of his organ, Mugabe responded by trying to hijack proceedings. He called what amounted to his own Organ on Politics, Defence and Security summit parallel to the main summit.
Hence the crisis. But behind the legalism and the vanity and egos, there are some potentially terrifying politics, as recent events around the Democratic Republic of Congo have illustrated.
While Mugabe hasn’t officially invoked his chairing of the organ to justify his military intervention in the Congo, it was clear when he addressed the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Durban last week that he was assuming the mantle of the elder statesman with a responsibility for regional security when he justified that intervention as being aimed at supporting a legitimate head of government from foreign invasion.
It was just as clear when, after a meeting of SADC partners at Victoria Falls last month, he summarily announced that the SADC was going into the Congo on the side of President Laurent Kabila – an announcement which was duly and roundly refuted by Mandela.
All this was arrant nonsense. In terms of its own rules, SADC military interventions can only be called at the request of the Organisation of African Unity and the United Nations, neither of which has been forthcoming in this case. In fact, Mugabe’s military actions, like those of Angola and Namibia, were taken for his own reasons.
Even before hostilities with the new rebels broke out, Mugabe had invested an estimated $200-million in mainly military but also economic partnerships with the Kabila regime, beginning with about $70-million for Kabila’s own rebellion in 1996 and 1997.
It is also understood that Mugabe’s nephew, Leo Mugabe, and Kabila’s son, Joseph, have recently come into possession rights to key mineral interests in a mining paradise worth an estimated $58-billion.
The under-the-counter partnership has been confirmed by no less a figure than Kabila’s own minister of mining.
Behind the immediate financial interests, there is also a question of regional influence.
With the liberation of South Africa in 1994, Mugabe lost not only his position as the elder regional statesman, but also an economic sphere of investment in Mozambique, nowadays virtually an economic colony of South Africa.
Mugabe was looking to redress this de facto freezing out through his alliance with Kabila, and his early response to threats that the former rebel leader could be toppled.
All this highlights precisely South Africa’s point vis–vis the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security.
In terms of the old frontline-states’ thinking on security, military support would be given on the basis of friendships and alliances forged essentially under the threat of apartheid South Africa’s adventuring.
Now, however, the stakes are higher, the situation more complex and the various structures of a regional organisation like the SADC exponentially more open to venal abuse.
Faced with these difficulties, South Africa, especially, is pushing a UN- recognised model of peacemaking which begins with agreeing to a ceasefire, then works towards the withdrawal of foreign troops.
Finally, within this model, parties to the conflict – in this case the rebels, Kabila’s government and other political interests inside the Congo – sit down and work things out for themselves.
In other words, the solution has to be found within the Congo, within the framework of developing the institutions of democracy, and not outside it.
It’s airy enough, of course. As this week’s aborted ceasefire talks at Victoria Falls illustrated, there are many opportunities for slips to happen between the cup and the lip.
But, as South African sources close to the SADC keep saying, the alternative, the course of action that Mugabe’s Organ could pursue unless it is brought under the big SADC umbrella, can only lead to further divisions and instability in the region.
Ivor Powell is acting political and foreign editor at SABC-TV