No protests yet as SADC meetings start in Harare; ex-ministers want summit to discuss Zimbabwe

By SABC News

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Foreign Affairs meeting started Wednesday in Harare, Zimbabwe ahead of the Heads of State and Government Summit this weekend.

The summit will take stock of progress made in implementing SADC’s Angola resolutions. The other important issues on the agenda will be peace and security in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa said the meeting will be a success.

“Let us all completely make our visitors feel at home away from home, that we are one with them, that they should always be free to visit, whether on business or private affairs,” the Zimbabwean leader said.

“That is the Zimbabwe that our department whom we have gathered here to commemorate would have loved to live in harmony and has always committed to the betterment of our kind.”

The meetings come amid concerns that Harare has been clamping down on opposition parties and Human Rights activists who have called for the SADC Observation Mission’s report on the Zimbabwe elections to be discussed.

“It is very important for the SADC leadership to ensure that the Zimbabwean matter is ventilated and discussed,” said exiled former cabinet minister Saviour Kasukuwere.

“You can’t meet in a country which is in a huge crisis, which has a security breakdown where people are being arrested on a daily basis and try to bestow whatever they are talking about.

“I hope and trust that the SADC leaders will start to interrogate the situation. It has been on their books for a long time, it is a matter of not handling it properly.”

Another former Zimbabwean Minister, Walter Mzembi, said the Harare government wants to portray a wrong picture about the status of affairs in that country.

“They have not been able to manage the atmospherics around the conference itself, to the extent that they have exercised this impression that is in the public domain for everyone to see,” he said.

“It has not helped to create conditions conducive for the holding of the summit without the raising of eyebrows from colleagues, heads of states in the region and other governments internationally. I just think that they invited a lot of negativity to the summit itself.”

Meanwhile, Zanu PF’s Kennedy Mandaza said the government would ensure that all the visitors and the citizens of the country are protected during and after the SADC meeting.

“We have been worried though, with the insinuations and some of the threats that have been made by individuals that are outside the organisation of SADC and these are the issues that the government has been trying to make sure that, they ensure that there is security for the visitors and security for the citizens,” he said.

“At times it is when the government, through its security operators, is trying to make sure that security is available in the country, that people have said that the government uses a heavy hand.

“We are of the view that the government is supposed to make sure that there is peace in the country during and even after the summit.”

#NDS1

44th SADC Summit, Mt Hampden, Zimbabwe pic.twitter.com/DbtM9BcevW

— NDS1 (@ZimGvt_NDS1) August 15, 2024