The implementation of the recently adopted regional industrialisation strategy, will be one of the topics on the agenda of the 35th Ordinary Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit of Heads of State and Government on August 17 and 18 in Gaborone, Botswana.
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The two-day summit is being held under the theme: ‘Accelerating Industrialization of the SADC economies through transformation of natural endowments and improved human capital’.
President Robert Mugabe’s jet-setting to meet his obligations as both SADC and African Union chairperson this year, has in addition strained the country’s fiscus.
In its statement, Amnesty pointed out that rights advocates in a number of SADC member states faced persecution.
But the summit failed to heed the calls of human rights organisations to return the SADC Tribunal’s mandate so that individuals and legal persons could have access to it.
“In Angola, police are increasingly clamping down on those who speak out against restrictions on freedom of assembly, association and expression”, the group asserted. There has been no progress toward justice for human rights violations and past political violence.
HRW also accused Harare of failing to address “fundamental economic and social rights concerns”.
The Sadc’s observer mission for the July 31, 2013 Zimbabwe elections judged the vote as free, but withheld their verdict on the poll’s fairness, amid opposition accusations of outright electoral fraud. The independence of the judiciary has been severely compromised, as exemplified by the grossly unfair trial of Bhekithemba Makhubu, the prominent editor of the country’s monthly news magazine The Nation, and Thulani Maseko, a human rights lawyer.
“Many founders are now dearly departed, but I am glad that Seretse Khama, the father, could see Zimbabwe become independent”, he said.
South Africa makes the list of countries concerning Human Rights Watch because of the government’s reluctance to acknowledge the attacks of foreigners as xenophobia and take the necessary counter measures. In April, xenophobic attacks on the businesses and homes of refugees, asylum-seekers, and migrants left several people dead and displaced thousands in Durban and Johannesburg.
Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s director for Southern Africa, is quoted as saying that the human rights situation in many countries of the region was getting worse.
Mufakose resident, Johnston Chirwa, said overally, the man on the street did not benefit anything from Mr. Mugabe’s chairmanship of the regional bloc, adding that if anyone came out with something, it was the president himself who got something by attending meetings with his counterparts in the region.
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Global relations minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas, and trade and industry minister Rob Davies formed part of the South African delegation at the summit.
