GRIFFIN SHEA, Blantyre | Monday
AN ambitious regional summit on conflicts in southern Africa opened on Monday with a call for Zimbabwe to ensure that its upcoming presidential elections are free and fair.
“As the date of the presidential election in Zimbabwe has been announced, we are all very hopeful that the elections will be peaceful, free, fair and transparent,” Malawian President Bakili Muluzi said in opening the summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
“We hope that will be so by allowing every Zimbabwean to participate effectively in the elections in the spirit of democratic principles and values,” he said.
Muluzi, who holds the rotating, one-year chairmanship of SADC, said free and fair elections are not determined only by the conditions on the days of voting, but by the entire process in the run-up to balloting.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will brief the summit on the situation in his country, Muluzi said.
“I believe that our duty as SADC will be to listen and offer advice where we feel it is necessary to do so,” he added.
Muluzi also urged the assembled leaders to consider ways of ending the wars in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which he said were hindering economic development in the region.
Talks on the DRC war got a boost overnight, when DRC President Joseph Kabila and met with two main rebel leaders through SADC’s defence organ. Officials declined to reveal the substance of those discussions.
Rebel leaders Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) and Adolphe Onusumba of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) are also attending the summit talks as observers.
Nonetheless, the outlook for real progress on the DRC was limited by the absence of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who decided at the last minute not to attend the summit, Malawian government representative Antony Livuza said, calling his decision “a setback.”
Kagame gave no reason for his decision not to join the talks, which leaders of all the other nations involved in the war are attending, Livuza said.
Angola and Zimbabwe have deployed troops to support the Kinshasa government, while Rwanda and Uganda back the rebels who control the eastern half of the DRC.
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos is also keen to persuade regional leaders to treat his nation’s main rebel group as terrorists and to win more regional cooperation in cracking down on their activities.
But the region’s most immediate problem is Zimbabwe.
Mugabe last week set Zimbabwe’s presidential elections for March 9-10, and then muscled through parliament two bills aimed at cracking down on the opposition while bringing out top military leaders to publicly support him.
Meanwhile, violence by pro-Mugabe militias has risen during the last three weeks, with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) reporting increasing attacks against its supporters.
Police arrested 22 MDC members in Kwe Kwe in central Zimbabwe on Sunday following violent clashes with ruling party supporters who one day earlier burned down an MDC office in the town.
MDC blames pro-Mugabe militias for killing at least 90 of its supporters during the past two years, while tens of thousands of others have been tortured.
The 77-year-old liberation leader, who has ruled since the end of white-minority rule in 1980, faces his toughest-ever challenge from MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Four Zimbabwean rights activists, who had come to Blantyre to raise awareness of the country’s political crisis, were arrested and deported Monday, apparently “at the request of the Zimbabwean government”, their lawyer, Brian Kagoro, said in a statement in Harare.
Malawian officials could not immediately confirm their arrests.
So far SADC’s influence on Zimbabwe has been limited.
Mugabe has repeatedly promised fellow African leaders that he will curb the rampant political violence in his nation, only to keep pushing the country further into a crisis that has already had economic ripple effects through the region.
The SADC comprises Angola, Botswana, the DRC, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Lesotho, the Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. – AFP