The Sunday News
Richard Mahomva
The Sadc resolution to push for the removal of sanctions against Zimbabwe affirms the region’s confidence in the Second-Republic’s renewed re-angling of our nation’s political-economy affairs.
The electoral endorsement of the President Emmerson Mnangagwa in 2018 was symbolic of the dignity which the Second-Republic carries under the ruling Zanu-PF. The conferment of this esteemed mandate to serve at the mercy of the people has inspired the ultimate decision reached by the entire Sadc community to have President Mnangagwa as the Chair of the region’s Organ for Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation.
The merited appointment of President Mnangagwa as the Chair of this strategic portfolio comes against a backdrop of multi-faceted neo-colonial expedience mechanisms cladded in the detraction efforts of the opposition MDC-Alliance. This explains why the recently choreographed protests (August 16) coincided with President Mnangagwa’s assumption of this top Sadc post. The anticipated aim of the protest was to injure Zimbabwe’s credibility to be a key figure of politics, security and defence diplomacy. The idea was to co-ordinate despondency with a view to agitate state security and give validation to the fabrications of the intensified whims of military hegemony in Zimbabwe.
However, the plan by the opposition to smear Zimbabwe’s qualifying position to lead this crucial Sadc organ was devoid of the endorsement of the 2017 November transition by the rest of the continent.
The decision by the entire continent to endorse the narrowly queried November transition is symbolic of the enduring pan-African position to defend the perpetuity of the liberation legacy.
The shared continental emotion to secure Zimbabwe’s liberation legacy was further affirmed by the Sadc and entire African Union Election Observer Mission (AUEOM) in 2018. This was a broad gesture by the continent to usher Zimbabwe into the Second-Republic by means of a democratic process.
Therefore, President Mnangagwa’s new regional appointment substantiates the extent to which the rest of Southern-Africa has been following closely the key political and security related developments in Zimbabwe.
This appointment serves an articulate position of the region to give sanctity to the reform path of our current political dispensation.
This further exposes the pitfalls of the local criticism to the Mnangagwa administration. President Mnangagwa’s current regional elevation crystallises the selective amnesia of the anti-establishment cohorts bent on polarising Zimbabwe in a bid to disfigure the success of the re-engagement overdrive.
This is a clear benchmark of a high diplomatic score of Zimbabwe under the able leadership of His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Cde Emmerson D Mnangagwa. His new assignment commands the importation of our domestic reform policy to the whole of Sadc. This would facilitate the much needed gravitas to reinvent Pan-Africanism’s relevance in re-tooling our consciousness to unite as a region and as a continent to harness our comparative advantage in global politics, security cooperation and defence.
The 25 October Anti-Sanctions Movement
In a communiqué of the 39th Sadc Summit, the region has declared 25 October 2019 as a solidarity day to push for the removal of sanctions against Zimbabwe. This pledge further consolidates the fraternal economic sympathies which Sadc countries share. The Sadc Secretariat has further lobbied for the anti-sanctions positions to be tabled for discussion during the 74 United Nations General Assembly set for September this year. This unprecedented move by Sadc sets a new tone for repositioning African issues in the global political arena, but most importantly this serves as a major diplomatic score for Zimbabwe.
The anti-sanctions position registers the extent to which our fellow neighbouring states are fully cognisant of the unbearable living conditions which the sanctions have inflicted on the ordinary Zimbabwean.
It is in my considered view now that Sadc has spoken, the long enduring cry of the people of Zimbabwe and Africa as a whole will be heard through-out the world. Therefore, this is our time for Zimbabwe to take its position as a think-tank to the new economic liberation narrative.
This is the time for us to draw more inspiration from our time immemorial struggle to defend the liberation legacy and the people’s voice of reason towards the unification of Africa.
In his seminal public lecture in South-Africa, Prof Artwell Nhemachena succinctly attacks the jugular vein of coloniality by stating that:
“African voices have spoken and cried but the world has not been humanistic and moral enough to listen. Today, Africans are speaking yet the world is busy pushing for post-humanist agendas — for agendas beyond African Ubuntu-inspired humanism — designed to take away the African essence of being human. Because Africa has spoken before, we perhaps need to think in terms of Africans speaking again.”
The Sadc resolution emphasises this fundamental ideological lobby of African States in safe-guarding the humanist agenda of the long isolated interests of the continent. In so doing, the Sadc is re-living its founding Pan-African regional unitary tenets. Of note, the imperative underscoring influences for the formation of Sadc are informed by the joint experience of liberation struggles, the fall of apartheid and the shared distress about the economic marginalisation of Southern Africa. Beyond the Pan-Africanist ideological currency of this regional bloc, the genealogy of Sadc is linked to the existence of two former regional organisations, namely the Frontline States (FLS) and later the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (Sadc). These two institutions respectively constitute the conception of Sadc’s political and security co-operation wing, and the socio-economic cohesion wing. These two arms of regional integration were co-founded within the context of the broader African decolonisation project. The post-independence experience continues to probe Sadc to execute a mission which enhances governance from a more Afro-centred inclination.
The Future beyond 25 October
There is need to aggressively pursue the collectively call for the immediate and unconditional removal of illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the West and to device counter measures against similar potential threats on member-states.
Member-states to take all necessary steps and measures including, but not limited to legislative and administrative frameworks to underpin the fight against sanctions in their various forms and manifestations. Sadc must deepen cooperation anchored on an outright fight against neo-imperialism through economic development centred diplomacy in Southern-Africa in a bid to secure the continuity of the decolonisation agenda and guarantee the longevity of the region’s central political interests.
There must be strengthened effort in harmonising African countries’ economic policy frameworks as an enabling mechanism to take full advantage of the newly formed African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA). This calls upon Sadc states to drive the sub-region economic integration to make member-states an optimal destination for capital, to allow mobility of labour and the unimpeded cross-border trade of goods and services.
We have a mandate to continue pressing for the total liberation of the Global-South. It is a role to be taken by none but ourselves.
