The Democratic Alliance (DA) and New National Party (NNP) on Thursday called on President Thabo Mbeki to act against Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe for oppressive tactics against his people.
In a members’ statement in the National Assembly, DA member pf Parliament (MP) Graham McIntosh said Mbeki should use the World Economic Forum, underway in Durban, as a platform to condemn the arrest and imprisonment of Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had ”consistently followed the route of legal, constitutional and non-violent means to assert its majority support”.
Yet over the past week the world had seen the reality of totalitarian rule in Zimbabwe.
”The Mail & Guardian’s front page photograph of a Zimbabwean policeman’s boot holding a citizen’s neck to the ground (and) stories of opposition supporters beaten and bloodied by security forces.”
There was also the ”appalling and dehumanising treatment” of Tsvangirai, who on Wednesday was escorted into court in a prison uniform with his feet shackled and his hands cuffed.
”Despite these horrors, and the damage to our own economy, the silence from President Mbeki has been deafening.
”The World Economic Forum provides the perfect platform for him to break his silence.
”The DA calls on the president to condemn the arrest and imprisonment of Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, and the brutal oppression of his supporters,” McIntosh said.
In a separate statement, NNP foreign affairs spokesperson Dr Boy Geldenhuys said Mugabe had defied the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights by ”seizing six companies who are seen to be sympathetic to the opposition”.
”Section 14 of this Charter protects property rights. The right to property and similar rights, which are enshrined in the Charter, is also included in the aims and objectives of the Constitutive Act of the African Union (AU).”
Section 23 contained punitive measures for flouting these aims and objectives.
”President Thabo Mbeki, as chairperson of the AU, now has no choice but to act against Mugabe,” Geldenhuys said. – Sapa