SADC Slammed for Ignoring Humanitarian Crisis

Alex Bell (AllAfrica)--Activists, trade unionists and other human rights organisations have condemned the Southern African Development Community (SADC) for ignoring the global demands to have the ban on humanitarian food aid in Zimbabwe lifted.

Zimbabwean Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche banned field work by NGOs during the campaign for the June 27 run off election and accused the organisations of providing campaign support for the MDC during the first round of elections in March - which the MDC won. The ban has remained in place since then and has left millions of desperate Zimbabweans, heavily reliant on food aid to survive, facing starvation.

In a final communiqué from SADC following the weekend’s summit in South Africa, no mention was made about the call by the United Nations, NGO forums and the MDC for the aid workers to resume their efforts in Zimbabwe. The communiqué urged the country’s political parties to sign outstanding agreements that will lead to a power-sharing deal ‘to restore political stability’, but completely ignored the desperate humanitarian crisis.

At a press briefing after the summit, President Thabo Mbeki said SADC facilitation had been initiated over humanitarian concerns, but suggested several times that addressing these would have to take a back seat to concluding a deal. He said a unity government in Zimbabwe is needed to ‘address these challenges’. Ironically, Mbeki’s appointment as mediator in the crisis came after the global outrage sparked by the brutal assault on MDC leader Morgan Tsvangerai last year. However since Mbeki’s appointment, the brutality against MDC members and supporters has gained momentum and the humanitarian crisis has worsened.

Elinor Sisulu, chairperson of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, said the summit showed the SADC’s ‘undemocratic governments were not geared to handle’ the crises in Zimbabwe. She added that Zimbabwe was an ‘exaggerated symptom of the illnesses of regional governments’ in general and SADC’s handling of the crisis sets a ‘bad precedent for the continent’. Sisulu said it is ‘mind boggling’ that SADC as well as Zimbabwe’s political leaders are acting ‘as if Zimbabweans don’t exist’ and emphasised that the ban on humanitarian food aid was putting the entire nation at serious risk.

Tuesday’s death of Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has prompted new fears that SADC’s pressure on Robert Mugabe will dwindle, given that Mwanawasa was the region’s strongest critic of Mugabe’s regime. Mwanawasa passed away in a French hospital after he underwent emergency surgery on Monday. The President had been hospitalised since June after he suffered a stroke at the start of the African Union summit in Egypt.

Sisulu said Mwanawasa’s passing should not change the attitude of some regional leaders, and said that other countries have also been outspoken. She said Botswana, whose harsh criticism of Mugabe led to its President Ian Khama boycotting the SADC summit, ‘is not going to change its position on Mugabe’ and Zambia’s new leader will likely take over where Mwanawasa left off, by not recognising Mugabe as Zimbabwe’s president.

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