SA silences MPs on SADC observer mission to Zimbabwe

By Tererai Karimakwenda
20 March, 2008

It appears that the policy of “quiet diplomacy” practiced by South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki is about to be applied to the regional observer mission deployed to Zimbabwe. South African parliamentarians assigned to the SADC team that will be monitoring Zimbabwe’s elections have been ordered not to issue independent statements.

The instruction came from Ambassador Kingsley Mamabolo, the foreign affairs deputy director-general for Africa, at a media briefing in Pretoria on Wednesday that was attended by the 54-member delegation.
Mamabolo said the delegation was to be guided by the SADC code of conduct and members should "not seek to score cheap political points" by expressing their individual views.

President Mbeki last year gagged negotiators from Zimbabwe’s opposition and ruling party, when he was assigned the SADC mediator on the Zimbabwe crisis. As a result the negotiations proceeded in secrecy with Zimbabweans kept out of the loop. Mbeki failed and nothing changed in Zimbabwe.

There is likely to be dissent among the ranks this time because MPs from South Africa’s main opposition Democratic Alliance party released a statement Wednesday, setting out their position. The DA declared that they will maintain their right to issue independent statements to the press, and to any other stakeholders they deemed appropriate.

The statement read in part: “We note and will exercise our right to interact freely with all relevant and interested parties and will also exercise our right to provide considered and timely reports on observed events to such parties, including the media. We also have to make it clear that we do not consider ourselves to be responsible to any other arrangements than those specifically laid down by the SADC Head of the Delegation.” Angola, not South Africa, is heading the delegation.

The last South African delegation that observed Zimbabwe’s elections in April 2005 was riddled with controversy after MPs from Mbeki’s ANC pronounced the elections free and fair. Independent Democrats’ MP Vincent Gore said the election was clearly unfair, and left early.

Democratic Alliance MP Roy Jankielsohn also disagreed, and he issued public statements disputing the findings of the South African mission. These individual statements got him into trouble.

Speaking to Newsreel on Thursday, Jankielsohn said he was interrogated by the Minister of Labour, the South African Ambassador and others, about his comments to the press. But even worse, the head of the delegation threatened him, saying they could not guarantee his safety if he continued talking to the press.
“Why would I need my safety guaranteed if I was in a country that was having free and fair elections?” asked Jankielsohn.

The final report of the South Africa mission was not debated or discussed in parliament. Jankielsohn said: “I drafted an independent report which obviously contradicted the report of the delegation, which had said the elections were free and fair. The elections seemed to be normal but lots of intimidation was reported to us. Plus the electoral framework made it impossible for those Zimbabwe elections to be free and fair. There was no way.”

The DA MP might as well have been describing Zimbabwe in 2008, because nothing has changed since the 2005 elections he monitored.