• Region’s liberation movements must reconnect with the youth•



Harare - Analysts say that liberation movements in Southern Africa have the capacity to outlive present and future machinations of their detractors but need to adopt relevant strategies to achieve this, among them connecting with the youth.Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF hosted fellow liberation movements from South Africa, Namibia, Mozambique, Angola and Tanzania in Harare about a fortnight ago.

The three-day meeting of secretaries-general or their equivalents from the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, FRELIMO of Mozambique), the MPLA of Angola, SWAPO of Namibia and Chama Cha Mapinduzi of Tanzania ended with a joint communiqué dubbed the Harare Declaration.

Reads part of the communiqué: “Political parties of former liberation movements should on a continual basis share election strategies and experiences to assist in closing the gaps and weaknesses that may exist in a political party’s campaign.”

It added, “The meetings called for the unconditional removal of the illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe and called for the release of the Cuban Five.”

The United States and the European Union slapped sanctions on Zimbabwe at the turn of the millennium in the hope of pushing out the ZANU-PF government.

The Cuban Five is a group of patriots from that country who were arrested, tried and sentenced un-procedurally in the United States in the mid-1990s for seeking to infiltrate a Washington-backed terrorist network responsible for attacks on Cuba that since the 1960s have resulted in the deaths of scores of people.

Southern Africa’s liberation movements condemned illegal regime change in Africa.

“The developments on the continent of democratically-elected governments being overthrown through coups, such as in Guinea Bissau and Mali, must be strongly condemned and seen as retrogressive in Africa’s quest to democratise, achieve peace, unity and devel­opment,” they said.

The parties resolved to be wary of the “balkanisation of Africa and develop strategies to prevent this”.

It was resolved that parliamentarians from political parties of these liberation movements should increase exchanges to share information and experiences.

Dr Joseph Kurebwa, who heads Political Science and Administration at the University of Zimbabwe, said it was important for the parties to meet regularly in light of common experiences with external threats.

But he said there was need for the liberation movements to be dynamic.

“They have the capacity to survive but they should also know that erstwhile colonisers will seek to weaken and divide the movements from within and outside,” he said.

He said there was no doubt that the parties should continue working together if they harboured any ambitions of remaining politically relevant now and into the future.

“They wield a lot of influence on each other and they listen to each other and they must design programmes and policies that benefit their peoples economically and socially,” he noted.

He said as youths were an important constituency, it was incumbent upon the parties to make themselves relevant to this huge demographic group.

Trust, he pointed out, needed to be established between the “old guard” and the youth so that they would be able to govern Africa in future with a firm grounding and understanding of the continent’s history and developmental challenges.

Another analyst, Gabriel Chaibva, added that liberation parties must remain aware of the machinations of their opponents and develop strategies to counter them in areas such as elections.

“No doubt they have the capacity to deliver although there will be a small bunch of people who seek to disturb them. But even during apartheid in South Africa some blacks worked with the white racists,” he observed.

Chaibva concurred that the youths were the cog in any revolution and the parties must find ways of remaining relevant to them.

“But they (the youths) must live to the ethos and aspirations for which the wars of liberation were fought; that is economic independence, ownership of natural resources and national sovereignty”

Officially opening the meeting, the host ‑ Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe ‑ described the West as “our worst enemy”.

He said the West would always come clandestinely to try and divide the people of Africa so that exploitation of the continent’s resources and citizens would continue.

President Mugabe castigated “residual Rhodesian and apartheid forces that are finding space in our midst, to use our courts in a manner that seeks to mollify their defeat at the hands of our liberation struggles and reverse the gains that we have attained for our collective peoples”.

This was in reference to a recent ruling by Judge Hans Fabricius in the North Gauteng High Court in South Africa calling on authorities in that country to probe alleged atrocities in Zimbabwe, arrest and prosecute alleged offenders under the International Criminal Court.

The Zimbabwean leader urged the ANC to take action, saying it should “see this for what it is and apply every means at their disposal to ensure that such machinations are not in the end, allowed to negatively affect our cordial relations”.