President Thabo Mbeki on Friday dismissed suggestions that Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders have recklessly ignored Zimbabwe’s problems in the interests of solidarity.
Writing in his weekly online newsletter, Mbeki accused Business Day newspaper of publishing on Monday a ”wholly fabricated story” alleging SADC leaders were divided over Zimbabwe, and describing a discussion at last week’s Lusaka SADC summit ”that never took place”.
”This is consistent with an unethical practice in sections of our media in terms of which they manufacture news and information and communicate complete fiction as the truth,” he said.
The newspaper manufactured an unbridgeable rift resulting in a non-existent paralysis among the leaders, arising out of the discussion that never took place, he said.
The fact of the matter was that, acting on the recommendation of the SADC organ on politics, defence and security, the summit meeting accepted the report on the Zimbabwe economy, as well as the proposal that finance ministers, in consultation with the government of Zimbabwe, use the report to elaborate specific interventions that could be made by the region.
”The hostile allegation that our countries have recklessly turned their eyes away from the problems of Zimbabwe, because of the imperatives of solidarity, has always been nothing more than a product of propaganda, which all thinking persons would recognise as such.
”The reality is that in a very real sense the problems of Zimbabwe are our problems, in the same way that the problems of the rest of Southern Africa are problems for Zimbabwe as well.
”Our entire region stands to benefit most directly from the recovery of Zimbabwe, in much the same way as Zimbabwe benefits from the progress of the region of Southern Africa, of which it is an integral and inalienable part,” he said.
The Lusaka summit meeting reconfirmed these fundamental positions, which included unqualified respect for the sovereignty of Zimbabwe and the right of its people to determine their destiny.
At no point would SADC and its member states act as a super-power that had the right to expropriate the people of Zimbabwe of their right to self-determination, ”as imperial Britain did”, Mbeki said. — Sapa