South African President Kgalema Motlanthe announced yesterday that the region was launching an urgent international campaign to assist Zimbabwe with a humanitarian crisis amid a cholera outbreak.
“The SADC [Southern African Development Community] Troika has decided ... to launch an urgent international campaign to mobilize financial and material resources for the people of Zimbabwe in order to help them overcome the challenges facing their country,” Motlanthe told journalists in Pretoria.
The announcement comes after Motlanthe called a meeting with health and water ministers in the troika of the SADC from South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia.
“Zimbabwe is facing serious humanitarian challenges characterized by acute food shortages and the recent outbreak of cholera,” he said.
Motlanthe said all countries in the 15-member bloc were expected to contribute to the campaign with their available resources.
He said the campaign was about aid and not Zimbabwe’s political crisis.
“This is not political work, this relief work is not to be politicized. It’s done on a humanitarian basis,” he said.
“So the mandate of this structure is really to ensure that the relief is distributed fairly to all deserving Zimbabweans. It is not to deal with the political challenges — those will be handled by the inclusive government once the inclusive government is in place. They will have the authority to deal with all challenges on the political front.”
The UN estimated this week nearly 1,000 people had died in a cholera epidemic that has affected more than 18,000 in Zimbabwe, compounding the country’s woes, which include inflation of 231 million percent and a political crisis.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s neighbors said they did not believe allegations that opposition militants are training in Botswana to overthrow Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
Motlanthe said the main regional bloc opened an investigation into the allegations when Mugabe’s regime first raised them last month.
But “we never believed that,” he said.
The Zimbabwean opposition says the allegations, which were made again this week, are part of a plot to create a pretext for declaring a state of emergency.
Motlanthe would not say why he thought Mugabe’s regime was pressing the allegations, but noted the “mistrust” among Zimbabwe’s politicians.
Motlanthe also said South Africa would not join international calls for Mugabe to step down, saying it was “not for us” to do so.
“It’s really not for us,” he said when asked by reporters how bad conditions had to get in Zimbabwe before South Africa would say it was time for him to step down.
“I mean I don’t know if the British feel qualified to impose that on the people of Zimbabwe but we feel that we should really support and take our cue from what they want.”
Motlanthe said he was hopeful Zimbabwe would have a unity government in place by the end of the week.
But the Brussels-based International Crisis Group described the rivals’ power-sharing talks as “hopelessly deadlocked.”
Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai should both step aside to allow a neutral administration to tackle the country’s crisis and prepare for a new election, it said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to