Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon on Thursday asked which version of events at this weekend’s Commonwealth meeting was correct — the version put out by the South African Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on behalf of the Southern African Development Community or British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s account to his House of Commons (Parliament).
In his weekly newsletter, Leon remarked that the two versions contradicted each other.
”The claims of SADC and of Prime Minister Blair cannot both be true at once. There is an urgent need for clarity on this issue,” he wrote.
Leon pointed out that after the Abuja conference ended, the DFA issued a statement on behalf of the SADC expressing ”strong disagreement” with the Commonwealth’s decision to maintain Zimbabwe’s suspension from the British former colonies club.
”The Commonwealth has always operated on the basis of consensus,” the statement said, complaining about what it called the ”dismissive, intolerant and rigid attitude” shown by some countries in Abuja.
Leon said it was questionable, however, whether the SADC statement was itself the result of a consensus.
”Malawi and Botswana, both members of SADC, reportedly voted with the rest of the Commonwealth to maintain Zimbabwe’s suspension. Just before leaving for Abuja, Malawian President Bakili Muluzi publicly criticised Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. And Botswana is at this very moment erecting an electrified fence along its border with Zimbabwe, over and against protests by the Zimbabwean government,” Leon said.
The DFA announced that the SADC statement was delivered by South Africa on behalf of Lesotho, which currently chairs the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security.
”That raises the question of whether our government, instead of formally consulting all SADC governments about the issue, simply put pressure on our most pliant neighbour to take a unilateral stance that purported to represent a multilateral consensus within the group,” Leon added.
”The SADC statement seems even more confusing in the light of the claims made on Tuesday by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the House of Commons,” the opposition leader commented.
He noted that Blair had said: ”The fact is that every single Commonwealth member signed up to the Abuja Statement on Zimbabwe — including the other 19 African members of the Commonwealth, despite the strongly held doubts of some of those countries.”
President Thabo Mbeki’s spokesperson, Bheki Khumalo, refused to be drawn on the matter, saying if there was a need to communicate with Blair it would be done through diplomatic channels, not the media.
No DFA spokesperson was available for comment. – Sapa