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appear before the team, prompting Media, Information and Publicity Minister Webster Shamu to specifically instruct ZMC to ignore the invitation.
Miffed by Minister Shamu’s directive, Ms Zulu wrote a letter to Minister Shamu asking him to write a report and to allow ZMC to appear before the facilitation team.
The letter was also ignored, prompting her to direct her letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which gave her an appropriate response.
This led GPA Principals to condemn the team’s tendency to interact directly with the lower tiers of Government.
Speaking to reporters on arrival at the Harare International Airport yesterday, the President said there was only one facilitator who was chosen in his personal, not national capacity.
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‘‘The facilitation team does not belong to us. We know of one person who is a facilitator, it’s not South Africa which is a facilitator, it’s President Zuma personally who is a facilitator and he naturally gets people that will help him to do his job of facilitating. Facilitating means helping Zimbabwe to decide the way forward in terms of the GPA objectives until we get to an election,” the President said.
The President said there was need for the three parties to the GPA to move forward so that elections can be held to usher in a Government that is not encumbered by destructive views.
‘‘We must go ahead and move into a situation where we have a Government that is constitutionally and legally established and has policies that it can pursue and does not suffer from the hindrance of destructive views that we are getting at the moment and that is what we want to see happening,” he said.
The President, who is on record decrying the ruinous tendencies of some of the parties in Government, said the parties wanted to perpetuate the life of the inclusive Government.
‘‘There are some people who want to stick to the vehicle of the GPA and do not want to leave this ramshackle. We are saying chovhamubaiwa hatiidi isu.”
The President said the summit was an ordinary session that was seized with discussing issues affecting the region but had no discussion on Zimbabwe after the presentation of the facilitator’s report.
‘‘This was the ordinary Sadc session we have every year where we discuss various issues, issues affecting members of our community, that means issues that are of an economic nature, problems that affect our member states. The facilitator might also have presented his report but we didn’t discuss it.”
Some sections of the local private and Western media were awash with claims that Zimbabwe topped the Sadc agenda.
Sources who attended the closed session said President Mugabe briefed Summit on Wednesday appraised it of the historical background behind the GPA and its internal mechanisms principally the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee.
The President told summit that Jomic was a sovereign institution; that was created by parties to the inclusive Government for purposes of monitoring each party’s adherence to commitments made in the GPA. By virtue of being a purely inter-party institution, Jomic could not – as was suggested in Livingstone – have a function larger than the national could, as it is an internal structure.
The ill-fated Livingstone Troika Summit had suggested that the Troika second three officials to work with Jomic.
‘‘Livingstone, which thankfully is dead and buried now, was a procedural irregularity that amounted to asking Sadc to join a national institution when it is a sub-regional organisation. How then can Sadc facilitate from within? There is need to distinguish between facilitation and participation,” said a source close to developments, speaking on condition of anonymity.
After President Mugabe’s briefing, the source said, Summit resolved that, the proposed secondment of officials to Jomic – which was ironically the only lingering aspect left – be shelved and forgotten.
‘‘The major Summit outcome was that, that particular element stands removed and that the facilitator must go back and consult with the principals of the political parties…
‘‘Summit asked the facilitator to consult with principals. It did not ask him to delegate,” said the source.
The Herald has it on good authority that prior to the just-ended Luanda Summit, the three principals had agreed that Jomic is sovereign and must deal with national issues; and that the facilitation team must uphold Zimbabwe’s sovereignty when going about its duties.
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Meanwhile the President and his delegation returned home yesterday and was welcome by Zanu PF National Chairman Cde Simon Khaya Moyo, Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, State Security Minister Sydney Sekeramayi; Media, Information and Publicity Minister Webster Shamu, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda and Service Chiefs.
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