Human rights abuses are continuing right across South Africa’s border in Zimbabwe while our government is conspicuous in its lack of a response to the humanitarian crises and calls for intervention from various quarters – including organisations that defend human rights, political parties and the UN.
We are engaged in a dangerous game of burying our heads in the sand while we point in the opposite direction of where the crises are emanating from. The old adages of “I am my brother’s keeper” and “No man is an island” become particularly relevant in that geopolitics are such that the actions of other countries cannot be ignored, because they have a domino effect.
Almost immediately after South Africa officially became a democracy in 1994, we joined the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Its main purpose is to “achieve economic development, peace and security and growth, alleviate poverty, enhance the standard and quality of life of the peoples of southern Africa, and support the socially disadvantaged through regional integration”. These are all tenets on which our own new dispensation was built, and one would imagine we would encourage other countries also to subscribe to them.
Yet, for the past few weeks, my colleagues have been reporting on the repressive clampdowns happening in Zimbabwe – significantly and perhaps ironically in the build-up to the 44th annual SADC Summit held on Saturday, 17 August, in Harare.
Alarming images of badly beaten activists, allegedly at the hands of Zanu-PF forces, have been all over social media. Activist networks’ pleas for help seem to have been falling on deaf ears. The DA even asked that South Africa sanction Zimbabwe by demanding that the summit be moved from the country in an effort to highlight the untenable human rights violations taking place there.
Ronald Lamola, our foreign affairs minister, and the Presidency responded clearly that they will not be acceding to this call. They said the country has no authority to do so, yet SADC’s policies enjoin member countries to “consolidate, defend and maintain democracy, peace, security and stability”.
Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Arnold Tsunga has been outspoken about the significance of SADC’s lack of action amid these violations, saying that it “undermines SADC as a whole and reinforces the notion that the SADC heads of state do not respect the rule of law and judicial oversight”.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa being the incoming SADC chairperson has brought this into sharp focus.
What is obvious – and so disappointing – is that the South African government has no issue with witnessing human rights violations on its doorstep. Our country is duty-bound to intervene, according to the principles on which SADC was founded, but also because these human rights abuses trigger forced migration in the region, as a result of people fleeing the violence and persecution meted out to them in their own country.
It leaves one wondering what exactly will be discussed at this summit that will lead to greater stability and peace in the region. SADC member countries are clearly unable to openly denounce and sanction their peers in the organisation that have proven themselves to be working against its establishing principles and aims.
History will not judge South Africa kindly in its review of this period. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
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