Southern African heads of state begin on Thursday a two-day summit in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, that is likely to be dominated by the crisis in Zimbabwe, which is being felt across the region as Zimbabweans flee the imploding economy at home.
President Robert Mugabe (83), who has been in power since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980, arrived in Lusaka on Wednesday afternoon.
Other Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders who arrived on Wednesday for the summit included presidents Amrando Guebuza of Mozambique, Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi, Festus Mogae of Botswana, Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia, Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili of Lesotho and King Mswati III of Swaziland.
The SADC meets under renewed civic and economic pressure to find a solution to Zimbabwe’s political and economic meltdown, but leaders seem keen to avoid the topic in the open.
Zimbabwe is facing a dire economic and political crisis.
Even as United States-based activist group Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the 14-member regional bloc to put pressure on Zimbabwe to ”end its broadscale attack on human rights”, neither the SADC programme nor the summit website made any reference to the troubled country.
The incoming SADC chairperson, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who previously likened Zimbabwe to a ”sinking Titanic”, was also silent on the issue in a pre-summit address televised late on Tuesday.
”SADC members must take strong and effective action to deal with one of the region’s most grave crises — Zimbabwe,” HRW director for Africa Peter Takirambudde said in a statement, urging SADC to send human rights monitors to the country. ”SADC’s credibility as a real force for change on human rights is on the line here and its leaders should insist on tangible improvements in Zimbabwe.”
Zimbabwe is in the throes of an economic crisis with inflation well past the 5 000% mark, four in every five people jobless and 80% of the population living below the poverty threshold.
Mugabe blames the economic woes on drought and targeted sanctions imposed against the ruling elite after the 2002 presidential election was dismissed as rigged by opposition parties and Western observers.
But critics say the problems started with land reforms in which the government seized at least 4 000 farms from white commercial farmers for reallocation to landless blacks and state cronies.
As the summit kicks off, observers will wait keenly for any word on South African President Thabo Mbeki’s report on his efforts to broker talks between Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change. But the report is set to be discussed behind closed doors, and officials have said it might not be made public at all.
Fellow SADC leaders, faced with a rising flood of Zimbabwean refugees to their countries, mandated Mbeki in March to broker talks following a violent clampdown by Mugabe’s government on opposition supporters. — Sapa-AFP