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Pretoria rebuffs DA’s call for SADC summit to be moved from Zimbabwe

Pretoria rebuffs DA’s call for SADC summit to be moved from Zimbabwe
Peter Fabricius
By Peter Fabricius
12 Aug 2024
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The South African government disclosed that it is considering UN Security Council action against Israel after the International Court of Justice’s provisional orders have had little impact.

South Africa’s government has dismissed calls by the Democratic Alliance (DA) for this week’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit to be moved from Zimbabwe because the Harare government abused its political opponents. 

South Africa had no authority to overrule SADC’s decision to host the summit in Harare, therefore President Cyril Ramaphosa, accompanied by International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola, would be attending the summit on 17 August, said Clayson Monyela, spokesperson for Lamola’s department, Dirco.

Meanwhile, Pretoria has disclosed that it is thinking of taking up its charge of genocide against Israel in the UN Security Council and is also considering other legal options after the four provisional orders issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel in Gaza appeared to have made little impact. 

Lamola held his first press conference on Monday, 12 August 2024, flanked by his senior officials. Monyela responded to a call last week by DA international relations spokesperson Emma Powell for Pretoria to ensure the summit was moved.

She cited the arrests and even alleged torture of several opposition politicians and activists over the past two weeks. Some opposition leaders have said that Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa is clamping down on his opponents to ensure they don’t embarrass him by holding demonstrations against him during the summit. 

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

Monyela said Zimbabwe was the incoming chair of SADC and that had determined the SADC decision that it would host the annual summit, according to tradition. 

“South Africa would have no authority to tell SADC that this summit can’t take place in Harare when Zimbabwe is the incoming chair.”

On the Zimbabwean government’s alleged human rights abuses against its political opponents, Monyela said South Africa stuck to the principle that these issues were best resolved by the Zimbabweans themselves sitting around a table.

South Africa stood ready to facilitate such discussions as it had before.

UN Security Council


On Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Zane Dangor, director-general of Dirco, said the issue before Pretoria was whether it should try to get the ICJ to issue more provisional orders against Israel. The four orders so far have demanded that Israel restrain its attacks on Gaza. They have had no visible impact. 

Dangor said SA’s legal team would be looking at the possibility of more orders but “we are looking perhaps at this stage of going the Security Council route”.

“Our team in New York is already engaging with various delegations in New York.”

He noted that Algeria, a current non-permanent member of the US Security Council, might be calling a meeting of the council to table a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Such a resolution had been previously adopted, but not implemented or enforced. 

Dangor said that in October, South Africa would also be submitting the merits of its arguments on the substantive case the ICJ is considering on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. 

Read more: Middle East crisis news hub

Dirco spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said South Africa joined other members of the international community in “strongly condemning the attack on a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians in Gaza that has killed more than 100 people, including women and children.

“The Israeli military claimed its air force on Saturday struck a ‘command and control centre’ that ‘served as a hideout for Hamas terrorists and commanders’ at Al-Tabaeen school but has not provided evidence to qualify the harming of defenceless civilians in its dangerous escalation,” Phiri said.  

Venezuelan elections


On the recent controversial elections in Venezuela, the SA officials indicated that Pretoria is provisionally withholding its judgement on whether the incumbent president, Nicolas Maduro, really did win the elections or whether he lost them to opposition leader Edmundo González.

Some Western and South American states as well as prominent world citizens have condemned the elections as fraudulent and declared Gonzáles as the rightful victor and the legitimate president of Venezuela. 

Phiri said SA was closely monitoring the process following the recent elections. He said Lamola had had a telephone call with his counterpart Yván Gil Pinto “who gave an extensive and informative account of how the elections unfolded. 

“Minister Lamola has welcomed that President Maduro, despite being declared a victor in these elections, has opted to subject the outcome to the Supreme Court. We reaffirm our support for the people of Venezuela to self-determination without the interference of external forces.”

South Africans detained in Equatorial Guinea


Lamola and his officials were also asked for an update on what progress they had made in securing the release of two South African engineers, Frik Potgieter and Peter Huxham, who were arrested in Equatorial Guinea in February 2023 and in June that year convicted and sentenced to jail terms of 12 years and steep fines for drug trafficking.

The families of the two men insist they are completely innocent of these charges which were trumped up to retaliate against the South African courts for seizing two Cape Town luxury houses and a super-yacht owned by Equatorial Guinea’s playboy vice president Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mangue.

The high court ordered them to be seized and liquidated just before the two men were arrested,  to finance the damages claimed by another South African, Daniel Janse van Rensburg, from Obiang for complicity in his wrongful arrest and imprisonment 10 years ago.

Read more: Equatorial Guinea won’t release two South Africans until vice-president gets Cape Town villas back

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention agreed in July that the detention of Potgieter and Huxham was arbitrary and illegal and called for their immediate release.

Those close to the two men have complained that Pretoria is not being active enough in securing the release of the two men, such as démarching the ambassador of Equatorial Guinea to protest against their continued detention.

Monyela noted on Monday that the last foreign trip Lamola’s predecessor Naledi Pandor had undertaken had been to Equatorial Guinea, in May, where she had sought the release of the two men. 

But he also noted that “Equatorial Guinea is a sovereign state and they are using their own laws. They believe there’s been a violation of some laws…”

He said the government was aware of the frustration over the case, particularly of the families. South Africa’s embassy in Equatorial Guinea was seeking consular access to Potgieter and Huxham “because we have to be sure that they’ve been treated fairly”.

He said the discussions with Equatorial Guinea and the efforts to get them treated fairly “and hopefully also released” were ongoing.

Nigeria


Lamola was also asked if South Africa’s relations with the Nigerian government had been soured by the controversy over the withdrawal of Miss South Africa contestant Chidimma Adetshina, following claims that her mother had allegedly stolen the identity of a South African. Adetshina’s father was Nigerian and many Nigerian citizens have condemned Pretoria for forcing her out of the contest.

But Lamola insisted, “Our diplomatic relations with Nigeria remain very strong” and said the controversy was confined to the organisers of the event.

He was also asked about the merits of the SADC military mission to eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to neutralise armed rebel groups in which some South African soldiers have died. 

Lamola noted that a ceasefire in eastern DRC negotiated by Angolan president João Lourenço had come into effect on 4 August and suggested the SADC force should take some credit for it. DM

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