The Sunday Mail
By Professor Jonathan Moyo
IF THERE are some people who are in for a rude awakening this week, it’s the mindless regime change scribes and their handlers whose wishful thinking is that President Jacob Zuma will use the extraordinary summit on Zimbabwe scheduled for South Africa on Saturday to play big brother politics and read the riot act to President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF. Some media crackpots say this would be a necessary defence and advancement of the alleged gains of the ill-fated SADC organ troika summit held in Livingstone on March 31.
Many will be disappointed, not least because President Zuma is nobody’s big brother and SADC does not conduct its work by reducing itself to the level of political parties from member states, some of which like the MDC-T are foreign founded and funded or by ganging up against one of their founding number.
In fact the extraordinary SADC summit in South Africa presents regional leaders with a golden opportunity to reaffirm and re-assert the regional body’s founding principles as a solidarity and consensus-based organisation formed to defend the sovereignty of its members and to advance African and not European or American interests.
Frankly, and given the embarrassing and manifestly un-African background of having treacherously voted at the UN Security Council for resolution 1973 which diabolically authorised NATO’S indiscriminate bombardment of Libya and barbaric killing of defenceless civilians ironically in order to protect them, it would be tragic if not suicidal for anybody in South Africa to allow the sacred soil of the land of Mandela to be used as treacherous ground for backstabbing a founding SADC member state and a neighbour whose national sacrifices for South African democracy remains a story yet to be told.
The nub of the matter is that SADC is not a self-indulgent organisation for individuals or political parties or foreign powers but a membership grouping of sovereign states in the region. As such, President Mugabe will be attending the summit in South Africa this week not in his individual capacity and not as first secretary and president of Zanu PF but as the Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces representing the entire sovereign Republic of Zimbabwe.
Those in our midst who suffer from the folly that President Zuma should use his position as both summit host and SADC facilitator on Zimbabwe to read the riot act to President Mugabe to force him to retire or not to hold elections this year not only miss the point that no leader in SADC has such authority in terms of the regional body’s history and treaty, but also that Zimbabweans would take strong exception to such an intervention which they would necessarily view as unacceptably hostile.
SADC leaders respect each other inasmuch as they respect each other’s countries. This profound sense of mutuality and paradigmatic alertness to reciprocity has made SADC a unique and exemplary regional organisation in the AU family.
The bottom line which makes the all-too-important difference at the end of the day is that SADC is a functional grouping of equal member states that are sovereign. This bottom line is the reason why SADC must stand with Zimbabwe whose sovereignty is under relentless attack from its erstwhile coloniser working in cahoots with its white and racist kith and kin allies in America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Yes, SADC has every right to ask hard questions about the political situation in Zimbabwe, but SADC must take all caution in the world not to exercise that mutually shared right in a manner that subverts Zimbabwe’s sovereignty or in a manner that gives Zimbabwe’s erstwhile coloniser an evil opportunity to trample on our national sovereignty under the brutal weight of its illegal regime change agenda whose content and purpose are morally equivalent to the tragedy of colonialism.
Some examples of the clear and present threats to Zimbabwe’s sovereignty that require urgent and robust SADC attention will illustrate the point. But first it should be remembered that as a concept about self-determination, sovereignty has two key aspects: one is the national autonomy to shape and define the national political process in which the people of Zimbabwe are free to make their own decisions in terms of their own constitution, laws, rules, regulations, norms, culture, values and tradition in pursuit of their own aspirations without being dictated upon by an external force whether neighbour, regional, continental or international; the other is the autonomy to make foreign policy guided by the national interest in a non-aligned fashion with respect to the global balance of power and forces.
Against this backdrop, it should be clear that the only reason why Zanu PF signed the SADC-mediated and guaranteed GPA on September 15, 2008, is because it sought to defend and reaffirm the sovereignty of Zimbabweans to make their own national choices freely including to form the government of the day at a time when Britain, the US, EU and the white Commonwealth were rushing to the UN Security Council in July 2008 with fraudulent claims that Morgan Tsvangirai had won a presidential run-off election that he had cowardly boycotted in a test run of what they later did in Ivory Coast, and still hope to do in Zimbabwe in the forthcoming harmonised general elections.
The GPA is thus very significant in that it kept the imperialist wolves out of the door while enabling Zimbabweans to maintain and assert their sovereignty by forming the GPA government on February 13, 2009. Unfortunately, after forming the GPA government, Zimbabweans were not left alone to implement the GPA through the government.
Instead, and unlike the instructive experience in Kenya where Kofi Annan negotiations ended after the Kenyans agreed to form a government and proceeded to form one whose attention shifted from negotiations to policymaking and implementation, the GPA government in Zimbabwe has been hamstrung and even undermined by continuing illegal GPA negotiations under SADC-sanctioned South African facilitation with an astonishing if not misplaced focus on the so-called roadmap to Zimbabwe’s elections.
This state of affairs, whose logic is tantamount to outsourcing or externalising the national policy process to South African facilitation under the pretext of GPA negotiations, has threatened Zimbabwean sovereignty in blatant violation of Article IX(9.2)(a) of the GPA which boldly states that “the responsibility of effecting change of government in Zimbabwe vests exclusively on and is the sole prerogative of the people of Zimbabwe”.
A roadmap to Zimbabwe’s elections is exactly about “effecting change of government”. Given the GPA declaration under Article IX(9.2)(a), why on earth are South African officials some who, like Lindiwe Zulu, have shown themselves to be either incompetent or dangerously partisan superintending over our national process of mapping out a road to the next elections when we have a legitimate and constitutional government, like they do in Kenya under a similar background, whose unfettered mandate should include precisely that task?
Why should a roadmap to our national elections be negotiated by three political parties, Zanu PF and the two MDC formations under the supervision of South African officials who are self-evidently ignorant of our constitution, laws, institutions and policy processes, when we have our own government in place?
The ignorance of the South African officials is already there for all to see in ways that are very harmful to our republic. For example, as part of the so-called roadmap to Zimbabwe’s election, the South African facilitation team has allowed partisan GPA negotiators to illegally agree that Zanu PF and the two MDC formations should share the allocation of board members to ZBC, Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) and the Mass Media Trust which is the majority shareholder at Zimbabwe Newspapers on some spurious formula of Zanu PF (3), MDC-T (3) and MDC M (1).
This is supposed to be an agreed allocation endorsed by the SADC facilitation team. But what is the legal basis of this patently offensive allocation? None! This means the formula that GPA negotiators have agreed to implement is in fact illegal.
Appointments to the boards at ZBC and BAZ are governed by Acts of Parliament and not by kangaroo negotiations under the convenient but misplaced cover of SADC. The responsible minister effects the appointments in consultation with the President and Parliament and the relevant law even specifies the types of national interests that must be taken into account in making the appointments and those interests are beyond political parties.
In fact, the law does not take kindly to political parties when it comes to broadcasting and yet we have a situation in which the GPA is abused to blatantly politicise appointments to the boards of ZBC and BAZ in the most primitive and negative way all in the name of GPA negotiations whose import is to subvert ministerial and cabinet responsibilities to the detriment of our national sovereignty.
The same is true of attempts to get the same three political parties to share the spoils at the Mass Media Trust which owns the majority share at Zimpapers. How can three political parties, with the blessing of an ignorant South African facilitation team, imagine that they can ignore the Deed of Trust of a company listed at the stock exchange with a strong base of minority shareholding by abusing an already negotiated and agreed GPA to appoint their own commissars to the Mass Media Trust whose Deed of Trust clearly stipulates how people can be appointed to or dismissed from its board?
Anyhow, if anyone tries to go ahead with the mindless 3:3:1 formula to the media boards in question, then they should prepare themselves for a battle royale in the courts. That madness will not be allowed simply because it comes to us with an undeserved SADC facilitation stamp. These are matters to be handled by the government of the day and through responsible ministers who have the institutional capacity to assess all the relevant material before making a final decision in terms of the law as a matter of our national sovereignty. It’s not stuff to be decided by unregulated partisan GPA negotiators under ignorant South African facilitation over a beer in some hotel heavens knows where.
What is infuriating is that, because they are ignorant of the situation on the ground, the South African facilitation team enable the MDC formations to lie that the electronic media in Zimbabwe is monopolised by ZBC when the fact is the US run Studio 7 is illegally broadcasting nationwide on medium wave to promote illegal regime change in the country!
But perhaps the one example that demonstrates the dangers to our national sovereignty in ways that are hair-raising is how, with apparent SADC acquiescence, the British government has smuggled its regime change agenda into the SADC facilitation process under the guise of supporting what is claimed to be a SADC election roadmap when unassailable information is now out showing that the so-called roadmap to Zimbabwe’s elections is nothing but a sinister initiative produced by British intelligence illegally working in Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s office in May 2009.
What was in 2009 called the Government Work Programme (GWP) for implementation by Tsvangirai’s illegal parallel government structures in 2010 and 2011 is now being presented as something new under the politically convenient but discredited Middle East concept of a “roadmap” with the prefix of “election” added for propaganda purposes. Yet the truth is that the GWP was supposed to replace the GPA. Put differently, the GWP, which is now called the election roadmap and whose origination is being mischievously attributed to SADC, is what the MDC-T and its sponsors would have wanted as the 2008 GPA.
While there are many harmless similarities between the so-called SADC roadmap to Zimbabwe’s elections ostensibly produced on April 22, 2011, under South African facilitation and the 2008 GPA, the few differences are striking and quite major because they seek an illegal change of government from within in line with the 2009 GWP that was authored by British intelligence illegally working in Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s office.
For example, the media and security sector reforms that loom large in the 2009 GWP now called the election roadmap are not anywhere in the GPA. It is unthinkable that the GPA would have provided for the forced retirement of the leadership of the security sector with impeccable liberation war credentials and distinguished national service to be replaced by puppets with a Rhodesian Selous Scout background such as Martin Rupiya who worked under the team of British intelligence officers, led by Charles Heatly in Tsvangirai’s office, that wrote the GWP in 2009 which in 2011 has become the so-called SADC election roadmap. Zanu PF would not have signed a GPA with provisions similar to those in the GWP or in the contentious election roadmap.
It is now very clear that despite making false noise that Zanu PF is not implementing allegedly agreed GPA provisions, the truth is that there is no single GPA provision that Zanu PF has refused to implement. All alleged issues that Zanu PF has not agreed to implement are not at all in the GPA but have been smuggled as negotiation items subsequent to the signing of the GPA on September 15, 2008.
The 2009 GWP authored by British intelligence and rechristened in 2011 as the election roadmap is not the GPA. This is why Zanu PF has maintained that the only acceptable election roadmap must be the GPA and the Constitution of Zimbabwe. The issue is not about when elections should be held in terms of the year or date but about the framework and process of the election that should be done in accordance with Article IX(9.2)(a) of the GPA which stipulates that effecting change of government in Zimbabwe is the exclusive and sole responsibility of the people of Zimbabwe as a matter of their sovereignty.
What makes the saga of the so-called SADC election roadmap as laughable as it is unacceptable is that the evidence clearly shows that the same office of the Prime Minister has failed to implement its own GWP given to it by British intelligence in the early days of the GPA government and now wants SADC to do the dirty work of British intelligence by putting unwarranted pressure on Zanu PF to implement an illegal regime change agenda of the British government under the cover of an election roadmap.
But again the point is that the failure by Prime Minister Tsvangirai to implement the work programme of his own office dictated by the British government in May 2009 should not have anything to do with when the elections in Zimbabwe should be held.
Meanwhile, it is sad that either out of malice or ignorance some officials in the South African facilitation team, such as the loquacious and reckless Lindiwe Zulu whose mindless megaphone tactics have undermined President Zuma’s work, have wittingly or unwittingly made a bad situation worse by, for example, entitling the minutes of the May 5 & 6 between the facilitators and the GPA negotiators as “Zimbabwe’s Peace Process Report of the Workshop held at Cape Town, South Africa, on May 5-6, 2011”.
Because these minutes will be presented at the extraordinary summit in South Africa this Saturday as an official record, it is clear that there is a diabolic intention to misrepresent the political process in Zimbabwe today as a “peace process” as if the country has been or is at war and is therefore a potential threat to regional or even global peace for purposes of referral to the UN under Chapter VII as happened in July 2008.
It is equally clear that there’s also an intention to share these minutes with other third parties outside SADC in the US and EU to entrench the misrepresentation in regime change quarters that are hostile to Zimbabwe. To justify their false and malicious portrayal of the political situation in our country as a “peace process”, the South African team of facilitating officials also routinely refer to the two MDC formations as “the opposition” to conjure up a false impression of conflict when the two MDC formations are in fact in government and ruling together with Zanu PF.
It should be said in the strongest possible terms that anybody among the South African facilitation team of officials or the GPA negotiators who views the GPA as a peace agreement, when it clearly was a political deal necessitated by the fact that no single party in the 2008 elections mustered a simple majority of 106 seats out of 210 in the House of Assembly, and who sees the political process prevailing in our country today as a “peace process” is a foolish and dangerous ignoramus who has no business poking his or her stinking nose into our national affairs.
Otherwise, and whatever decision the extraordinary SADC summit takes in South Africa this week, the one fact that will never change, a fact most clearly enshrined in the GPA and the SADC treaty and the Constitution of Zimbabwe, is that insofar as the so-called roadmap to Zimbabwe’s election has to do with “effecting change of government in Zimbabwe” then it is the exclusive and sole responsibility of the people of Zimbabwe.
Changing government is not the responsibility of SADC, not the responsibility of ignorant South African facilitation team of officials, not the responsibility of Britain or the US or the EU or the white Commonwealth but the exclusive and sole responsibility of the people of Zimbabwe as represented by their government and State headed by President Mugabe.
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