Mnangagwa cleans up and cracks down to ensure a good-looking SADC summit

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

By Peter Fabricius

8 Aug 2024

Roads have been tarred, lampposts replaced and new villas built to impress regional peers ahead of the SADC summit in Harare next week.

Zimbabweans are paying too high a price for hosting the Southern African Development Community (SADC) annual summit in Harare next week, the country’s opposition says.

They are paying in scarce currency being diverted from essential services to build infrastructure just to impress the visiting regional leaders. And they are paying in assault, torture and detention of dissidents to prevent them from mounting any protests at the summit.

In the run-up to the summit, President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling Zanu-PF have launched a major clean-up of the area around the summit venue in Harare and a major clampdown on the opposition – real or imagined.

Last week four pro-democracy activists were hauled off a commercial plane at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport and detained, interrogated and tortured for eight hours, according to Zimbabwe’s Lawyers for Human Rights.

They were advocate and human rights activist Namatai Kwekweza; Robson Chere, general secretary of the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe; human rights politician Councillor Samuel Gwenzi; and Vusumuzi Moyo, an artist.

Read in Daily Maverick: Condemnation and calls for action as Zimbabwean activists detained and allegedly tortured

Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur for human rights defenders (HRDs), posted on X, formerly Twitter, that she was “shocked by reports that HRDs incl. Namatai Kwekweza & Robson Chere were detained yesterday, held incommunicado & at least one mistreated in custody. Namatai joined us last year for a meeting on youth HRDs & is an inspirational young woman. All must be released now.”

Meanwhile, police also arrested opposition MP for Hwange and lawyer Daniel Molokele, along with one of his councillors, Ellen Zulu. Many others have also been detained, opposition members say.

South Africa’s Democratic Alliance foreign affairs spokesperson Emma Powell called on the SADC to move the summit away from Zimbabwe because of the crackdown.

SADC spokesperson Barbara Lopi said: “SADC is the 16 member states. And the member states are proceeding with the decision made at last August’s summit for the Republic of Zimbabwe to host the 44th Summit and assume the Chair of SADC on August 17 2024.”

Daily Maverick asked South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation to respond, but it had not done so by the time of publication.

Crackdown on opposition

Mnangagwa crackdown in Zimbabwe Advocates for Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights appeared in court to help pro-democracy activists who were detained at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport on 31 July 2024. (Photo: Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights)

Councillor Samuel Ngwezi (centre) walks into the Harare Magistrates’ court in blood-stained clothes. He was one of four pro-democracy activists who were hauled off a commercial plane at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, detained and questioned for eight hours on 31 July 2024. (Photo: Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights)

David Coltart, mayor of Bulawayo and former education minister and opposition senator, said more than 100 people were now being held in detention. These include not only Molokela but also Jameson Timba, who was a minister with Coltart in the unity government between 2009 and 2013.

Coltart said Timba is “a professional man, a very moderate soul, heavily involved in private education, and he just happened to have youth members of the Triple C [the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change] at his home on the 16th of June celebrating African Youth Day and his house was raided and he’s been in detention ever since then.”

He said Timba had committed no crime yet had been denied bail.

“It’s very clear that instructions have been given to the courts. And then of course last week these four activists were hauled off a plane in Harare, tortured within the Harare International Airport.”

Coltart said two Bulawayo councillors and a former deputy mayor were arrested last Thursday and also denied bail.

“And it’s clearly paranoid, they [Zanu-PF] have sent out a message countrywide, and it’s tied to the summit.”

Coltart said that although he had no part in it, there might well have been an intention to organise some sort of demonstration at the summit.

“And Mnangagwa, it’s not so much Zanu-PF; Mnangagwa is just absolutely paranoid. He’s been trying to project the SADC summit as an indication that his policy of re-engagement with the international community is bearing fruit, that he is accepted by SADC.”

Read more: Zimbabwe and Zanu-PF an intriguing conundrum for SA’s GNU foreign policy

Even though the summit will last only one day, the government has spent vast amounts of money on infrastructure in Harare, “diverted from far more needy areas of the country to rehabilitate all the roads from the airport, ironically only the roads where the heads of state will drive along.

“Those roads have all been re-tarred, electric lights put in. A new highway’s been put out to the new Chinese-built parliament (where the summit will be held,” Coltart said.

He claimed a Swiss company has been contracted to build new villas close to Parliament where the leaders will stay one night.

“And clearly it’s all about bling, it’s all about the facade, the veneer. And the last thing he wanted was to have this veneer shattered by demonstrations in the presence of heads of government.”

So he said Mnangagwa launched the crackdown. “I think that all of these people will probably be released shortly after the 17th of August, but it’s the equivalent of preventive detention, where people are literally locked away to prevent them from doing things to embarrass Mnangagwa.”

Zimbabwe’s isolation

US sanctions zimbabwe leaders Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa. (Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Coltart said Mnangagwa had calculated very well, as other SADC leaders had not complained about the crackdown.

“I think at its core is the fact that Mnangagwa is feeling very isolated. He was embarrassed by the elections last year. He was embarrassed by the SADC report [the election observer report which was unusually critical of the elections].”

Read more: SADC: After Zim’s chaotic elections, Zambia’s Hichilema leads where South Africa fails

Coltart said the debt forgiveness negotiations, which are being mediated by the African Development Bank, are going badly.

“The economy is in a very bad state. It’s been exacerbated by the drought. And his goal to get a third term, I will not say is on the rocks, but clearly there are divisions even within Zanu-PF.

“So he’s feeling vulnerable, and he’s placed great store in the summit, and he wants it to go as smoothly as possible.”

Coltart said that Mnangagwa is not focused on the longer-term damage the crackdown on his opponents is doing to his international image.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported this week that “food insecurity levels in Zimbabwe are rapidly deteriorating after it was hit with historic droughts due to the El Niño weather pattern”.

It said the drought had destroyed more than half of the country’s harvest, leaving about 7.6 million people at risk of acute hunger. DM

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Zimbabwe’s isolation