Swazi Civil Society Statement on the Situation in Zimbabwe

southern africa | indigenous struggles | non-anarchist press Tuesday April 15, 2008 16:03 by Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations - SCCCO sccco at mac dot com

Regarding the Withholding of Presidential Results of 29th March, 2008

The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organization (SCCCO), a Coalition of Swaziland’s broad Civil Society organizations and NGO’s, wishes to add its voice to those who have rightly condemned the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s (ZEC) withholding or refusal to release the Presidential Election Results of 29 March, 2008 without just cause. We see this action as one designed to provoke frustration and anger of the gallant people of Zimbabwe to a point where, in desperation, they take the law into their hands in a manner similar to the recent crisis in Kenya wherein the election victory by the opposition was stolen by the outgoing government of President Kibaki.

We therefore, call upon the leaders of SADC, meeting at an emergency or holding an emergency or crisis meeting in Lusaka, Zambia tomorrow, 12th April, 2008, for them to call upon President Mugabe and his Associates in ZANU-PF to allow the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission to release the Presidential Election Results without any further delay and to allow the will of the people of Zimbabwe to change their government through peaceful means to succeed. We further call upon the leaders of SADC to tell President Mugabe and his government to cease mobilizing party militias, youth gangs, the security forces and the war veterans who are currently terrorizing the innocent peace loving people of Zimbabwe and invading white farmers, driving them out of their farms by way of intimidating the voters against voting for the MDC should there be a need for a re-run or run- off elections for the presidency.

The Swaziland Coalition is also mindful of Swaziland’s atrocious record of prematurely pronouncing such fraudulent elections as free and fair that of Kenya against a backdrop of withholding recognition of those elections by the majority of the AU member states. We see this act by our government as an act of misrepresenting the interests of the Swazi citizens. We also condemn the actions of the SADC monitors, the PAP monitors, as well as the AU monitors for prematurely pronouncing the Zimbabwean Elections as having been “free and fair”. We consider the statements by these organs as representing a betrayal of the trust by the Zimbabwean people of these structures. It is our view that elections are not just the day voting is taking place, but that the principle of Free and Fair takes into account all the prevailing conditions months (and many months) before the election date and during the election dates, including timeous release of the election results. It is for this reason that we condemn the actions by the abovementioned institutions of prematurely pronouncing themselves even before all the election results have been released.

We take this opportunity to salute the people of Zimbabwe for demonstrating restraint, under extreme provocation by President Robert Mugabe and his associates, to provoke them into taking the law into their hands as the people of Kenya did recently, thus justifying a state of emergency, prolonging his indefinite stay in power against the popular will of the people of Zimbabwe.

It is clear to us that by refusing to have the ZEC release the Presidential Election results, President Robert Mugabe and his associates in ZANU-PF is hoping to provoke the anger of the opposition, so that if they take to the street in demand for the release of the election results, he and his security forces may unleash a brutal crackdown on the Zimbabwe citizens similar to the one he unleashed on 11th March, 2007, in which his forces carried out mass arrests and severe beatings of opposition leaders as well as leaders of civil society in which one citizen was killed. This time around, we believe Robert Mugabe wants to create a situation where in he can justify mass killings similar to his crackdown of the 1980’s in which his forces and specialized trained militias massacred more than twenty thousand (20 000) people in Matabeleland. We are saying Mugabe is still capable of doing this and therefore calling upon the leaders of SADC, and the AU as well as the International Community to stop Mugabe from any further brutalization of the people of Zimbabwe.

To President Mugabe himself; we would like to address his conscience (if he still has one) and request him to ponder about the legacy he wants to leave. We, in Swazi Civil Society would have liked to have remembered Robert Mugabe as a leader who championed the liberation of Zimbabwe from Colonial rule. We also would have wished to have remembered President Mugabe as a leader of the then Frontline States which maintained a heroic fight against the continued colonization of both Namibia and South Africa by the then Apartheid Regime of South Africa. This is how we would like to have remembered Robert Mugabe, not as a leader that has destroyed his country and subjected his own people, for whose freedom he and others laid down their lives to such inhumane suffering in which the people of Zimbabwe are going through at the moment. We call upon President Mugabe to ponder on this issues and also to consider how his children should fit in a future democratic Zimbabwe.