Malema Tells Ramaphosa, SADC To Restrain Mnangagwa

Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. A South African opposition leader, Julius Malema on Thursday lambasted the country’s President, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, and regional bodies, AU and SADC, for avoiding confronting President Emmerson Mnangagwa over his alleged authoritarian tendencies.

Malema, who leads South Africa’s third largest party EFF, was speaking at his party’s 10th anniversary celebrations in Johannesburg.

He said both the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have become useless in addressing the violation of human rights by African leaders. ZimLive quoted Malema as saying:

African Union is a meeting of friends who do not even call each other to order.

They can meet with a dictator who has just killed his people and do not even mention it.

So, we can’t allow the African Union to continue working the way it is working.

We are talking here about SADC; we have a problem in Zimbabwe.

These members of SADC don’t call the government of Zimbabwe to order because it is a group of brothers.

That government is violating people there.

Malema, who is an MP in South Africa and also in the Pan-African Parliament, said Ramaphosa should call Mnangagwa to order for dealing harshly with his political opponents. Said Malema:

No one in SADC has raised his voice to say what is this. So, we cannot have these regional bodies and the continental body including the Pan African Parliament by the way which are not biting on countries that are engaged in wrong activities.

What is wrong with President Ramaphosa calling President Mnangagwa to order; it would be coming from a good place.

They are all brothers; they are all Africans, they all speak, we assume for the interest of Africans.

So, we can’t have a situation where we have regional bodies, continental bodies that become a meeting of the elite without concrete solutions to the problems confronting the people of Africa.

Last month, Namibian opposition leader Bernadus Swartbooi castigated SADC leaders who congratulated Mnangagwa on his re-election in August 2023 despite the SADC Election Observer Mission (SEOM) and other election observers raising questions on the credibility of the polls.

He also said Mnangagwa is a “puppet of the Zimbabwean military” as he came to power on the back of the November 2017 military coup.

For More News And Analysis About Zimbabwe Follow Africa-Press