The Democratic Alliance’s nominated representative to join the Southern African Development Community’s observer mission to Zimbabwe for that country’s election at the end of the month, has been excluded.
In a statement on Friday, DA Chief Whip Douglas Gibson said the exclusion of MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard was ”an outrage”.
”Some time ago, Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma invited the DA to nominate a representative. But I was today advised by (deputy director general of the African arm of foreign affairs) Jessie Duarte that the DA representative has not been included.
”We were thanked for our readiness to serve.”
Gibson said he would now write to Dlamini-Zuma to establish who excluded the DA MP.
”We must establish by whom the DA representative was excluded; was it Minister Dlamini-Zuma, was it SADC itself, or was it the Mugabe regime?
”If it was either South Africa’s foreign minister or SADC, this move is an ominous sign of a lack of tolerance for democratic diversity.
”If Mr Mugabe and his government excluded Kohler-Barnard, it is yet another sign that a free and fair election in that country is virtually impossible,” he said.
Also on Friday, the Freedom Front Plus named MP Willie Spies as the party’s representative on the South African Parliament’s multi-party delegation that will act as observers during the Zimbabwe election.
The delegation will leave for Zimbabwe on March 14, and return to South Africa on April 3. – Sapa