The Zambian Government is preparing to host the 27^th Ordinary Meeting of Heads of State and Governments of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to be held in capital, Lusaka , over two days from 16^th to 17 August 2007. Thriteen  of the fourteen Heads of State and Government are expected to attend, demonstrating a high attendance rate and significance of the regional meeting. The scheduled meeting by the Southern African leaders has come at a point where a number of burning issues have emerged and now constitute the official agenda of the Summit succeeding to draw international attention. For instance, in the run up to the Summit, major conferences around the emerging European-Africa Strategy to replace the lapsing Cottonou Agreement were held in Lusaka during this week with the purpose of developing options to be submitted to the leaders and intended to guide them in the EU required signing of the documents during the EU-Africa, Caribbean and Pacific countries in Lisbon in December. At least eight key components appear to have received close attention in the debates: including Development & Cooperation; Peace and Security; Democracy and Human Rights; Agriculture and Food Security; Environmental Sustainability; Regional Trade and Integration; Energy and Infrastructure as well as Migration. Some of the key recommendations that emerged from the deliberations that are also linked to the debates and mandate given to Civil Society Groups at the Ghana-Accra African Union Summit in May include: suspension of the intention to sign on the new strategy (ies) in order to allow more time for Africans to make inputs and suggestions and secondly, seeking to create space for CSO’s more high profile engagement in the consultative process.

At the political and governmental levels: a number of key issues have been identified and placed on the agenda: the most burning include the political crises in Lesotho , the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe . In an interesting twist, SADC has placed voting and participating sanctions on Congo for failing to meet their subscriptions requirements to the regional organization amounting to just over a million. Hence, although the country will be represented, its leaders will have no authority to exercise its vote not require SADC structures to employ the national quota allocated to each member state. This is an interesting mechanism by SADC, a measure that is not unique but is also common at the African Union level. The crisis in Zimbabwe particularly has drawn increased attention with millions simply leaving the country forced out by the continuing economic deteriorating conditions. On this, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is in Lusaka already holding a series of conferences at which they are hailing SADC for acknowledging the existence of the crisis for the first time and calling for urgent and more broader multilateral African intervention. Meanwhile, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, following the SADC Meeting in Tanzania that provided him with a mandate to intervene and mediate in the Zimbabwean crisis before reporting back to the Summit is due to give his report, a development that is eagerly awaited by local and international press corps.

For purposes of burning internal political dynamics, Zambia is going through a Constitutional Reform process and the organization called Oasis Group representing the Collaborative Group on the Constitution (CGC) had planned a demonstration to coincide with the hosting of the Summit . However, at the eleventh hour, Oasis has agreed to postpone this to after the Summit , a gesture President Levy   Mwanawasa has welcomed while commending the organization of maturity and positive regional political conscientiousness. A second item on the agenda that is of interest is that of launching the SADC component of the African Standby Force (ASF). Apart from activities witnessed in recent weeks around East African Standby Brigade, the SADC development will likely to be the first that any of the regional economic and security communities (RECs) have fulfilled the African Union’s Constitutive Act call to establish regional military components. To this end, SADC has indicated that it is ready to sign a sub-regional security protocol with the AU that will give life and continental political mandate to its rapidly emerging structures. The SADC Summit has also been confronted with making a statement on the Darfur crisis, with internationally renowned musician Hugh   Masekela already in town and prepared to perform tonight in the hope of highlighting the plight of victims, especially women and children in the Sudanese crisis. More generally, Lusaka is clean, efficient and with not too much overt security while waiting for the leaders to jet in today and begin the much awaited deliberations. What outcomes will emerge from the Summit will be interesting!

Robot  Villager

# 1 ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 15.08.2007 17:14