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By Ross Moyo
With Zimbabwe’s president, Dr Emmerson Mnangagwa as the new SADC chairman of the annual and rotational post, this year’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit has been one of the best attended in recent years.
This is despite local controversy which included jailing of opposition activists and pressure to move it from Harare, Zimbabwe, after South Africa’s second largest party in government the Democratic Alliance DA called for Zimbabwe’s alleged disgrace to be the reason to stop it in the country and move it elsewhere.
In spite of it all, the 44th Southern African Development Community (SADC) ordinary summit was one of the best-attended by heads of state and government in the past nine years.
The absence and vocal rebuke to shenanigans by Harare from only three heads of state who did not attend, namely Zambia’s Hakainde Hichilema, who handed over charmanship online of the SADC troika Organ on Politics , Defense and Security Coorperation left a permanent scar on the summit raising eyebrows on already allegedly strained relations between Harare and Lusaka.
The Comoros’ President Azali Assoumani and Prithvirajsing Roopun of Mauritius also copied Zambia’s Hichilema snubbing the event despite the least attended summit having been in South Africa in 2017 where just nine out of 16 heads of state and government showed up.
Zimbabwe’s Harare summit ran under the theme: Promoting Innovation to unlock opportunities for sustained economic growth and development towards an Industrialised SADC.
With Zimbabwe taking over, President Mnangagwa shielded longtime friend King Mswati in a new development, when he removed Eswatini from the Troika Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation whilst encouraging Lesotho to speed up electoral reforms.
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