GRACA MACHEL, the wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela, has described Zimbabwe’s government as illegitimate and says regional leaders have allowed hundreds of thousands of people to die needlessly in the African nation.
“Any government that goes out and assaults its people, its citizens, it has lost completely any kind of legitimacy,” Ms Machel said at a news conference yesterday where Zimbabwean activists launched a hunger strike to put pressure on President Robert Mugabe and the SADC (Southern African Development Community) regional body.
Ms Machel, who was barred from entering Zimbabwe on a humanitarian visit late last year, said hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved had the leaders of SADC taken stronger action to end the crisis.
“We trusted too long. It’s time to tell our leaders we lay the lives of all those who passed on . . . in the hands of the SADC leaders because they took responsibility to stop the mess there,” she said.
Asked if the veteran Zimbabwean ruler, in power since independence in 1980, should step down, Ms Machel said: “The people of Zimbabwe have already said so . . . the ballot has spoken.”
Members of the newly-formed Save Zimbabwe Now campaign will not eat for three weeks, but will take water, as part of their plan of solidarity with Zimbabwe’s hard-pressed citizens.
Among the hunger strikers who will go without food for 21 consecutive days are the president of the World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Kumi Naidoo, and the chairwoman of the South African Gender Commission, Nombiso Gasa.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and South African Human Rights Commission chairman Jody Kollapen will also take part in the campaign, though to a lesser extent, fasting every Wednesday for the next three months. Others have chosen to fast up to three days a week.
“We have Mahatma Gandhi at the back of our minds as we embark on this hunger strike,” Save Zimbabwe Now in a statement. “Fasting has been chosen to symbolise the hunger and discomfort faced by millions of Zimbabweans every day in varying forms of severity.”
It added: “Strikes will continue up to a period of three months, unless meaningful and tangible gains towards demands by us [Save Zimbabwe Now] are met.”
This latest attempt to push for a resolution in Zimbabwe’s political crisis has come five days before SADC leaders and the country’s political rivals meet at a specially arranged summit to try and break the impasse.
While Mr Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai signed a powersharing deal in September, the process of forming a new unity government has broken down over the allocation of key ministries.
Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said on Tuesday it held out little hope of a breakthrough as both parties appeared as far apart as ever.
“You can have a million extraordinary summits, but as long as no one [in the SADC leadership] has the courage to look at Mugabe in the face and tell him, ‘old man, logic has to prevail’, it will be meaningless,” MDC secretary general Tendai Biti said. – (Additional reporting by Reuters)