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RED ALERT |
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SACP Statement On The Recent Developments In Zimbabwe
16 April 2008
The SACP has been closely following events in Zimbabwe, including the circumstances surrounding the recently held national elections. We wish to join our allies, the ANC and COSATU, in expressing our concern in how these political developments are unfolding. We are extremely worried and strongly condemn the ZEC’s clandestine management and failure to announce all the results, more than two weeks after voting. There is every merit to the insistence that all election results be expeditiously announced. The SACP fully supports such a call.
Consistent with the past SACP principled perspectives, our view is that current day Zimbabwe represents a post-colonial aberration of national democratic objectives of transformation, in which popular aspirations are deferred, in the interest of narrowly elitist accumulation projects of a small bureaucratic stratum and the most parasitic sections of the ruling class.
The SACP remains convinced that the principal cause of the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe is that of a degenerating national liberation movement, which once fought a heroic struggle, but now paying the price of being trapped in state power that is not buttressed by the people’s will.
The intransigence of not releasing the results, and the deployment of police and the army within communities, represents the growing alienation of sections of the Zimbabwean elites from control and monopoly of bureaucratic state power.
It is important that South Africa and SADC, does not pander to the whims of the Zimbabwean elites, and should allow the realization of democratic aspirations of the poor people of Zimbabwe. Otherwise this sets a terribly bad precedent for the SADC region, if not the African continent as a whole.
Failure to release the election results is tantamount to stealing the elections from the people and risks whatever little credibility that ZEC still had.
The SACP reiterates its principled solidarity support to the suffering people of Zimbabwe and calls for an end to the crisis.
Issued by the SACP.
Contact:
Malesela Maleka
SACP Spokesperson – 082 226 1802
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