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That the 44th SADC Ordinary Summit of Heads of States and Governments held in Harare, Zimbabwe, on the 17th of August 2024, confirmed Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa as the chairperson of the regional body is an irony that discerning observers of the African condition could not miss. What even the most discerning observers could miss, however, is the depth of the irony and tragedy that Mnangagwa could be endorsed by Southern African heads of states and governments to advance the theme of the summit: “Promoting Innovation to Unlock Opportunities for Sustained Economic Growth and Development”.
Zimbabweans, even the children amongst them, know that if truth be told, the name of Mnangagwa should not be found in the same sentence with words such as “innovation” and “unlocking” of “economic growth”. Zimbabweans have known the man for championing the opposite of these ideals by leading in the perpetuation of the Gukurahundi Genocide of the 1980s and leading a cartel of his family members, friends, cronies and fronts that have made corruption and the looting of public funds a political and economic culture in the country. The observation and argument that Zimbabwe is a failing or failed state cannot be substantiated without dropping the name and works of Mnangagwa as evidence. In other words, the man is the material and the metaphor for Zimbabwean decline.
In Zimbabwe, Mnangagwa has not only been called the “richest man in the country” but also a “man that is richer than the country”, and all this has not been due to his entrepreneurial skills and diligent work but to corruption and the looting of public coffers in the country. Discerning Africans may recall the tragic eventualities in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the corrupt and tyrannical Joseph Mobutu stood up during the Finance Minister’s budget presentation speech to personally “donate” money to the ministries of the country that he led. The means and ways by which the donated money was sourced were not disclosed. That is how far and how deep corrupt tyrants such as Mnangagwa can go. The tyrant may openly donate a small part of the proceeds of his looting of public funds and expect the same public to be grateful for his generosity. It is part of the psychic life of the tyrant that he, to comfort his damaged ego, believes that he is a man of the people.
The enterprising flatterers and sycophants that surround Mnangagwa call themselves varakashi, which means vandals or “whippers”; they are in it for themselves as singing the praises of the man in Zimbabwe is a highly paying occupation. Some Zimbabweans have learnt that singing Mnangagwa’s praises is actually singing for one’s breakfast, lunch and supper combined. The opposite, criticising Mnangagwa, is a crime that has led many Zimbabweans to beatings by secret agents, to jail, and for others, to the grave.
Mnangagwa: The head of state and the state of his head
There is Mnangagwa the head of the state of Zimbabwe, the specific state of whose head and whose mentality have produced certain political practices and performances that have worried Zimbabweans and must concern Africans. Mnangagwa has had no problem appearing in public with convicted criminals and taking advice from questionable and self-styled prophets whose mission has evidently been the profits and earnings that are conspicuously consumed before the eyes of impoverished Zimbabweans. In a 2023 Aljazeera documentary – Gold Mafia – Mnangagwa was exposed as the “Mr Jones” who leads a syndicate of gold smugglers, money launderers, and prophets-for-profit in Zimbabwe. He was exposed as the president who charges a fee to be seen by international businesspeople and wheelers and dealers who wish to invest in Zimbabwe.
If Mnangagwa has not been associated by Zimbabweans with the growth and development of the country but with the very opposite, how he is going to deliver the same ideals to a whole African region is a question that should be asked by all concerned Africans. That those who cannot look after a homestead may not be trusted to look after a village is not even African wisdom but everyday commonsense. That Mnangagwa chairs SADC clearly indicates that the Southern African ship of state is headed nowhere and at a fast clip.
Mnangagwa was named in a United Nations report as one of the African politicians who benefited from the blood diamonds of the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1998. Since his time as Robert Mugabe’s “special assistant” and then as his vice president, the political opposition parties in Zimbabwe have experienced Mnangagwa as a perpetrator of electoral fraud and political violence. Politically, Mugabe had two hands, the right and the left. On the right hand, he presented himself as the “philosopher king” and “scholarly Pan-Africanist” leader who berated Western imperialists at United Nations fora. On the left hand, Mugabe was the brutal tyrant who clobbered political opponents, assassinated challengers within and without his party, and disappeared opposition political activists. Zimbabweans know full well that Mugabe’s left-hand politics was personified in Mnangagwa who earned infamy as Mugabe’s trusted assassin.
In political analysis, political messages and political meanings might be two different things that are related but are not the same. While my message here is that it is ironic and tragic that Mnangagwa is presently the leader and face of the Southern African Development Community when he is infamous for corruption, electoral fraud, and genocidal political violence, the meaning of this message is about SADC and what it has become. The fact that Mnangagwa is the chairperson of SADC might not say much about him as an individual leader of an African state and government but it says a lot about SADC as an African regional political and economic body.
What further deepens this irony and the tragedy that accompanies it is that a SADC Electoral Observation Mission that observed the Zimbabwean elections that produced Mnangagwa as president found the plebiscite to be unfree, unfair, unjust and fraudulent, and the results of it not representative of the electoral and political will of Zimbabweans. In other words, the report of the SADC Electoral Observation Mission indicated in very strong terms that Mnagagwa’s presidency of Zimbabwe was fraudulent and therefore illegitimate. This came after Mnangagwa succeeded Mugabe through a military coup that SADC looked away from in November 2017.
When such a controversial, disputed and questionable African head of state and government as Mnangagwa is endorsed as its chairperson by such an African regional body as SADC, when its own appointed electoral observer mission and the Zimbabwean political opposition and civil society have noted his election to be fraudulent and illegitimate, we can only be concerned about the condition and status of SADC as an African regional multilateral body.
In short, SADC continues to be led by illegitimate and questionable characters from among African leaders and, therefore, may not live up to its promise and mandate to champion the economic development, political progress, security, and unity of the people of Africa. Pan-Africanism itself as the philosophy, ideology, and praxis of African unity and progress suffers when scoundrels are elected to positions of leadership of African countries, the continent and its polities and economies. It is political bad news for Zimbabwe and the African continent that such questionable and controversial characters as Mnangagwa are found in positions of power and responsibility. It cannot, by any measure, be an exaggeration that SADC will be as good or as bad as the content of the characters of the leaders that populate its ranks. Such a body should not, in the interests of Africa, be a refuge for political scoundrels and illegitimates.
Africans think, and they are worried about SADC
What SADC is and what it does has not escaped the attention of thinking and observing Africans. For instance, Suzie Ndaundika Shefeni, writing for The Pan African Review, observed how the SADC electoral observation mission of 2023 had the opportunity to chart a “new way of doing politics” in the continent by boldly condemning the faulted Zimbabwean electoral process and outcomes despite the tendency in African politics to protect former liberation movements such as ZANU-PF from criticism and censure. It is a tragedy that the same SADC whose observer mission declared the election of Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe fraudulent, unfree, and unfair has endorsed him as the chairperson of the African regional body.
In a telling book published in 2012, Community of Insecurity, Laurie Nathan described how SADC has struggled and failed to ensure the peace and security of the Southern African region. Nathan decried the divisions amongst SADC member states and leaders, the violent conflicts that dog Southern Africa, ineffective peacemaking approaches, disputes over security strategies and protracted peacemaking and conflict resolution mechanisms that do not lead to any tangible outcomes. Not in so many words, SADC is observed by Nathan and other concerned interlocutors as toothless when it comes to protecting Africans from their rogue governing regimes and leaders such as Mnangagwa.
As noted by respected journalist and editor Mondli Makhanya, the endorsement of Mnangagwa as SADC chairperson despite his horrific human rights abuses in Zimbabwe is “SADC’s tragic blot” where the name and the exalted goals of the regional body are besmirched by the presence within it of disputed, illegitimate, and despotic Southern African heads of states that are oppressing the populations of their countries. Corrupt and despotic Southern African heads of states give SADC a bad name and disable its efforts towards the achievement of its goals, vision and mission. Writing about the African Union, Aljazeera columnist Tafi Mhaka notes that the African multilateral body is “an exclusive club for brutish despots” that specialise in protecting each other from the hungry and angry populations of their countries. That SADC might be another club of tyrants who use its political and diplomatic shelter to hide from democratic accountability to the masses of Southern African countries is a concern that must worry all Africans.
The possibility of a pan-African SADC
A SADC that is invested in the political and economic interests of the southern African masses and is liberated from the narrow desires and fears of former liberation movements and other political elites is possible. This is a possible future SADC that would grow the political and legal teeth to protect southern African masses from rogue ruling regimes, authoritarian political parties, and despotic leaders. This SADC would have the political and legal stamina to democratically intervene in the polities and economies of member states to secure the rights of the water drinkers and bread eaters of southern Africa. Based on the solidarity and unity of the African masses and free from the domination of corrupt despots, this SADC will not be donated to southern Africans by ruling regimes but will be a result of the struggles of the African populations in southern Africa that must be angry and tired enough to conduct “springs” against despotisms, corruptions, and the violence of tyrants and their ruling regimes that have only perpetuated the oppressive rule of Africa’s colonial and apartheid regimes.
