Mnangagwa Spokesperson Taunts South Africa
The Deputy Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet (Presidential Communications), George Charamba said South Africa overestimates its capacity to solve conflicts on the continent when all that it can do is offer friendly solidarity.
This comes after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa revealed on Monday that his Zimbabwean counterpart, President Emmerson Mnangagwa had sought a meeting of the two countries’ ruling parties – the African National Congress (ANC) and ZANU PF to discuss how the former can help the latter deal with its crises.
However, following a meeting of the ANC’s national executive meeting on Monday, it was decided that the ANC delegation would also meet Mnangagwa’s rivals – churches, opposition political parties and civil society organisations.
In an extraordinary outburst on Twitter, Charamba claimed that South Africa was deluded in supposing that it has the capacity to deal with the challenges facing the SADC region. He said:
South Africa is no donor State in SADC. If anything, its long apartheid legacy makes its post-1994 subregional role quite problematic for the rest of SADC States who know the continued dominance of Afrikaner capital in SADC does not benefit the ANC or blacks in Soweto or Khayelitsha. That is the sordid truth.
South Africa cannot intervene militarily in any SADC country. That lesson was driven home during the Mandela days when it sought to do so in Lesotho. Since that disastrous escapade, South African diplomacy has been tempered and restrained to function within SADC structures, as should be!
Just what is the logic and implication of Zimbabweans of insufficient history and national consciousness asking for South African intervention in Zimbabwe outside SADC structures?
Charamba said only Zimbabwe has the capacity to play a stabilising role in SADC and accused South Africa of being used by Western powers against Zimbabwe.
