There is no hope in Sadc

By Cyprian Muketiwa Ndawana | Oct. 25, 2023

Your Excellency, as the Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc) commemorates yet another annual day of solidarity with Zimbabwe, my sincere submission is that the regional grouping conversely displays its idiocy.

GOOD day, President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Despite the commemorations being held for the umpteenth count, the discourse is hollow. It lacks the requisite coherence, conviction and innovative thought processes expected of a group that has a legitimate claim.

From where I stand, your re-election was voidable and without triumph. Consequently, your government has a dire need for an ethical brother's keeper of the calibre of John the Baptist. His plain truth message, “Repent and be baptised", roused some Jewish leaders to the awakening of their legitimacy deficit.

Your Excellency, as I see it, your said new dispensation needs to be plainly told to respect the cornerstones of democracy. It is my abiding perspective that your government does not deserve the outpouring bonanza of sympathy from the Sadc.

Accordingly, my conviction is that if Apostle Paul were to write Sadc an epistle, he would be as anguished as he was when he wrote to the Galatians. It would be underscored by the righteous rebuke, "You foolish Sadc! Who has bewitched you?" (Galatians 3:1)

This year's commemorations are on the immediate aftermath of Zimbabwe’s August 23 and 24 sham elections. Considering the absence of diligence in the implementation, the elections were destined to be a counterfeit. As Oscar Wilde stated, it was seen through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of an empty pageant.

Your Excellency, the irrelevancy of the call for the immediate unconditional removal of the targeted sanctions discourse, so is the hollowness, are devoid of sincerity. It is an irrational regional diplomatic intervention. It is labouring in vain, akin to barking up the wrong tree.

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Methinks it is about time the annual solidarity commemorations were discontinued. Their futility has long been an embarrassment.

Yet, it must be of grave concern to Sadc that Zimbabwe repeatedly runs flawed elections. They fail to comply with the Constitution, Electoral Act and the recent Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections (2021).

Consequently, citizenry are hostages to deprivations by Zanu PF. They are deprived of the right to elect a government of their choice as evidenced by the outcome of the August 23 to 24 harmonised elections.

Yet, the likes of Fikile Mbalula are sworn stormtroopers of Zanu PF, notorious for their aggressive loyalty. They do not subscribe to the principles of equitable justice, recognising that virtue is its own merit. And, conversely, transgression is its own demerit.

Sadc sees nothing untoward even amid the unbridled electoral chicanery and human rights deprivation. It is utterly ridiculous that they buy into the nonsense that any disputant of Zanu PF is said to be an enemy of the people sponsored by the US and her Western allies.

Surely, the conscience of Sadc took a permanent leave of absence. They do not relate the targeted sanctions to the occurrences of selective application of the law, electoral malpractices, and the almost institutionalised corruption.

Your Excellency, it is ignoble that today Sadc chants all daylong with the verve of a prosperity gospel preacher for immediate removal of unconditional sanctions. Yet, the annual Auditor-General's reports are a herald of the chronicle of rampant government corruption.

As I see it, the thought processes that convinced the regional grouping to declare October 25 as the annual solidarity day with Zimbabwe over the imposition of targeted sanctions by America and her Western allies is questionable.

With the likes of the late President John Magufuli of Tanzania, a man who was given more to frivolity, speed and volume than to rationality and introspection, the framing of the sanctions day commemorations were characteristically gassy and conspicuous by empty verbose.

Given that development is one of the key objectives of Sadc, methinks they ought not have resolved for the idiotic solidarity strategy. Their solidarity is futile, destined to end in embarrassment. It can only be a corruption-prone country where the President pays hefty inducements disguised as loans to judges, ministers, parliamentarians and the top brass-uniformed personnel.

Your Excellency, you have the obligation to own up to the misgovernance and corruption that resulted in the imposition of targeted sanctions. Essentially, the targeted sanctions were not imposed as reactionary retribution for the land that was wrestled from some white farmers.

Also, you are duty-bound to set the record straight that the targeted sanctions are binding only on some scrupulously identified individuals by the American government. It needs to be underscored that America has never reneged from its commitments to Zimbabwe.

It is about time Zimbabwe stopped portraying herself as a victim. My understanding is that the targeted sanctions were not imposed as retribution for the agricultural land that was grabbed from the former commercial white farmers as claimed.

Critical thinker Brenė Brown observed that integrity was choosing courage over comfort, what is right over what is easy and practising our values rather than simply professing them. His sage ought to be your thrust for your engagement and re-engagement undertaking.

Your Excellency, observance of the sanctity of democracy, human rights and the rule of law are the propitious conditions for the removal of the targeted sanctions. It matters not that the region persists in solidarity chants. As I see it, Lazarus will not be resurrected.

Cyprian Muketiwa Ndawana is a public-speaking coach, motivational speaker, speechwriter and newspaper columnist.