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Patrick Chitumba in Victoria Falls
INCOMING Sadc chairman, President Mugabe will launch the Hashim Mbita Project during the 34th regional summit to be held here this week.
It is a Sadc project to document the history of the liberation struggle.
Hashim Mbita was executive secretary of the Liberation Committee of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) for 20 years from 1974 until after South Africa gained majority rule in 1994.
The Liberation Committee, which was established at the founding summit of the OAU in 1963 to support the decolonisation process diplomatically and materially, was formally decommissioned in August 1994 with a closing report titled, “Mission Accomplished.”
Sadc secretariat head of public relations, Leefa Penehupifo Martin said yesterday that the regional bloc is excited that Zimbabwe is hosting the 34th Summit as she has been on the forefront advocating for the liberation of colonised countries since 1980.
Addressing journalists on the sidelines of a meeting of the Finance Committee of senior’s members of the regional bloc at Elephant Hills Resort, Martin said after attaining its independence in 1980, Zimbabwe quickly turned its attention and helped other countries attain independence.
She said the leadership role by Zimbabwe was evident from the time the organisation was formed in 1980 as the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (Sadcc), which was the forerunner of the socio-economic cooperation leg of today’s Sadc.
“The summit is the first in Zimbabwe in as many years despite the fact that she has been there since 1980 when Sadcc was formed. As a result, the region is happy that Zimbabwe is hosting and taking over the chair,” she said.
“Zimbabwe has always been playing its leadership role in the past years.”
Martin said the fact that President Mugabe was going to launch the Hashim Mbita Project was a milestone for the regional bloc.
Martin said, “President Mugabe who would have assumed the chairmanship of the bloc will launch the Hashim Mbita project, a documentation of the history of the liberation struggle of the region since Zimbabwe was at the forefront, and assisted many countries which are free today.”
For more than 30 years, the committee operated from Tanzania where that country’s first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, and the Tanzanian people gave it their full support.
Mwalimu Nyerere, who died in 1999, was a founding father of the OAU and the first chairperson of the Frontline States, which established the Southern Africa Development Co-ordination Conference (Sadcc), that later became Sadc.
As deputy chairperson Zimbabwe was a member of the Summit Troika from August last year, and will assume the chair until August next year after which it becomes a member of the Organ Troika up to August 2016.
The summit would be held on Sunday and Monday, but would be preceded by the meeting of the Council of Ministers on Thursday and Friday.
The meeting of the Standing Committee of Senior Officials is underway and ends tomorrow.
The summit is being held under the theme: “Sadc Strategy for Economic Transformation: Leveraging the Region’s Diverse Resources for Sustainable Economic and Social Development through Beneficiation and Value Addition.”
derick.khumalo