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Farirai Machivenyika
Senior Reporter
The SADC caucus in the Pan African Parliament (PAP) is confident its candidate for the organisation’s presidency, Chief Fortune Charumbira, will win the elections that will be held in South Africa later this month.
The elections are expected to be held in Midrand, South Africa, when the PAP meets between June 27 and July 8.
Chief Charumbira is PAP’s acting president. The elections were aborted last year in May after the Southern Africa caucus insisted that the post of PAP president should rotate through the five regions of the AU: North, West, East, Central and Southern Africa.
The AU, which includes all its organs, follows a principle of rotation with its leadership positions to unite the continent.
The southern region is of the view that only the northern and southern regions should have presented candidates for president because only these two are yet to have PAP presidency, but this was not accepted by a majority.
The issue was resolved by the executive council of the African Union last October after it adopted a resolution to apply the principle of rotation to the Pan-African Parliament’s presidency, which will provide all regions an equal opportunity to lead.
Yesterday, the SADC delegation at the PAP held a strategic meeting to ramp up the campaign for Chief Charumbira after paying a courtesy call on the Speaker of the National Assembly Advocate Jacob Mudenda.
The head of the delegation and the campaign manager for Chief Charumbira, Namibian parliamentarian Mr McHenry Venaani, said they were confident of victory. “We are very confident given that there are only two regions that ought to put up candidates and that is the northern and the southern regions,” he said.
“We are hearing rumours that the northern region has only one country that wants to put up a candidate and the whole region doesn’t support that candidature, so we have the support of the northern region and the southern region in terms of candidature.
“We are already winning, but we are not going to leave anything to chance and we will work around the clock, fly to the capitals of the continent, engage parliamentarians, the Presidencies of countries, plenipotentiaries of States and make sure that we deliver victory for Southern Africa.
Adv Mudenda said the chaos that characterised last year’s aborted PAP elections would not recur and said the region would win the election.
“When you get into an election you go there to win, you don’t prepare to lose,” he said. “If you have a negative attitude and you doubt yourself why should you enter the election? We are in the election because we expect to win; that is our approach.”
Established in 2004, the PAP is a consultative assembly of the African Union, which meets twice a year in South Africa, where it is based.
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