NO MENTION OF ESWATINI IN SUMMIT 1ST LEG, SADC SLAMMED

MBABANE – Over 5 000 comments, most of which were criticising SADC for not including Eswatini on its first leg of its summit agenda, flooded the organisation’s Facebook page yesterday during the 42nd Heads of State Summit. The summit ends today.

Hosted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the 42nd Ordinary Meeting of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Heads of State and Governments Summit was underway in Kinshasa, DRC yesterday. The country’s political situation was not mentioned yesterday during the first leg of the summit, where outgoing SADC Chairperson Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakerwa, the President of Malawi, handed over the reins to DRC President Felix Tshisekedi. According to reports, the Chairperson of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa, will be addressing regional issues on security, purportedly today.

There was an evident social media uproar yesterday over the non-feature of Eswatini in any of the items or subjects discussed during the summit, save for an award given to His Majesty King Mswati III on behalf of one of the founders of SADC, King Sobhuza II. Social media users, both local and international, minced no words and ensured that the SADC page was inundated with comments of distaste and displeasure over these developments. “Not even one of the speakers has made mention of the political situation in Eswatini, what is the deal with that?” questioned one Facebook user.

keynote

This was one of numerous comments questioning the exclusion of the political situation in the country from the remarks and keynote addresses made by the speakers during the first leg of the summit. Worth noting is that the theme of the summit is ‘promoting industralisation through agro-processing, mineral beneficiation and regional value chains for inclusive and resilient economic growth’. Some of the comments also included calls for democracy in the country, with most local users proclaiming ‘we want democracy’ and ‘democracy now’ on the comments section of the live broadcast of the summit. “SADC is sadly disappointing to the people of Swaziland (Eswatini). Why are they all deliberately ignoring the situation in Eswatini. Please intervene in the country,” exclaimed one Facebook user.

The conspicuous exclusion of the country from the summit’s agenda was evident in some of the speeches and remarks made by speakers, such that Dr Chakwera, the outgoing Chairperson of SADC, did not make mention of the country in his keynote address, although he included other SADC member States. The chairperson, when highlighting the plans for engagement and implemented projects before handing over his chairmanship, highlighted that SADC was open for business, but it was up to the member States to ensure that it remained so. “SADC is safe and we must ensure it remains so, SADC is peaceful and we need to ensure that is maintained,” said Dr Chakwera. He stated the projects which had been implemented as the tenure of Malawi in chairmanship approached an end. These projects included a detailed mapping analysis of selected value chains, which was undertaken to determine the actual performance and identification of opportunities and constraints of the value chains, specifically in the agricultural value chains.

progressed

“These value chains were promoted in member States such as Malawi, Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. South Africa (SA) was also said to have progressed well with shell fish value chains, while Lesotho and SA had also progressed well in the trout value chain, and Madagascar in the prawn value chain and Mauritius in the marine fish value chain,” he stated. He also made mention that considering the key roles the private sector played in the SADC region, efforts were ongoing to raise awareness of small-scale farmers in the private sector and compliance with sanitary merges. “The excess capacity in Angola and Tanzania cannot be accessed by other member States due to inadequate transmission capacity and missing interconnectors between Angola, Malawi and Tanzania to other nine member States.”

In a previous report, Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Norman Ntshangase, said the country was represented in the summit. “All I know is that Eswatini is represented in the summit, which is expected to commence today (yesterday) and end tomorrow in Kinshasa, DRC,” he said. The news about Eswatini being part of the agenda was confirmed by SA’s Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, Naledi Pandor, on Monday afternoon. Pandor stated that SADC was grappling with the issue of peace and security in certain parts of the region. She said regional leaders would meet in a bid to tackle burning issues.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: