The Sunday Mail
PRESIDENT Mugabe was elected Chair of the African Union when the 24th Ordinary Summit of the General Assembly officially opened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Friday. Zimbabwean journalists covering the Summit, among them Herald Editor Caesar Zvayi, caught up with Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi to talk about this latest honour bestowed on Zimbabwe in the wake of the Sadc Chairmanship, the challenges ahead and President Mugabe’s vision, among other issues.
Q: Zimbabwe was elected AU Chair for the next year. Some quarters say it is a rotational position. What is the correct position?
A: Let me begin by expressing our appreciation for the vote of confidence and recognition that has been accorded our President. I know that there are some who may believe that the notion of chairing the AU is rotational, that is not strictly correct.
What is rotational are the regions, there are five regions and every year each region gets the opportunity to chair our organisation, but the country which actually chairs the organisation is selected by the regions. So for Zimbabwe to become a candidate for election as Chair, our Southern African region had to select Zimbabwe to be their candidate for their turn to chair the organisation.
The fact that the Southern African region selected Zimbabwe is correct but it is more accurate to say they selected President Robert Gabriel Mugabe because his position on the continent is unique.
He is about the only sitting President who rubbed shoulders with the founding fathers; I do not know whether I should also say founding mothers, of our organisation. He was there in 1963 representing our liberation movement when the OAU was formed; he was there and those of that generation to which he belonged are now gone.
We now have a generation of younger leaders whose appreciation of the founding principles and ideals of our organisation is through what they heard or what they read rather than what they actually experienced. He is about the only sitting president who can tell you about who was Nkrumah, who was Nasser and so on.
So he is kind of a bridge between the founders and the current generation. So the region found it befitting that a leader of his stature should lead our organisation at this point in time so it’s really recognition, an accolade which has been extended to our President and we as a nation appreciate it very much indeed.
Q: What agenda does President Mugabe face as leader of the African Union?
A: We have our developmental blueprint Agenda 2063. This is the programme of action of the African Union which is going to be implemented over the next 50 years and its implementation will be done in five 10-year plans, and this year will be the first year of the first 10-year plan.
Although we are counting from our 50th anniversary, the blueprint document has only been approved in this Summit, yesterday, under the chairmanship of President Mugabe.
He has, therefore, been the midwife of this very important programme of action by the African Union, and therefore has an obligation to lay the necessary foundation to this very important programme of action. And the flagship of this programme of action is the idea of how the people of Africa should and must benefit from the diverse natural resources that Africa is endowed with. I think you have heard on many occasions President saying Africa is extremely rich in natural resources but Africans are poor.
That is the irony; that is the contradiction which Africa must resolve and this is even in his address, even while he is chairing this theme keeps on coming through, that Africa must benefit from Africa’s resources.
And the key element to this success is the departure from the current practice where Africa exports its natural resources in their raw form. So the flagship of Agenda 2063 is the beneficiation, and value-addition of all our natural resources because that will ensure that the returns that we get from our natural resources will be so much higher that they benefit the people of our continent.
So this will be the main thrust of President Mugabe’s Chairmanship to lay foundations for that programme.
You know that in April, as a result of the decision that was taken in Victoria Falls, at the Sadc Summit last year, Sadc is going to hold an Extraordinary Summit in Harare with only one item on the agenda: the industrialisation of the Sadc region because that is key.
If you don’t industrialise, if you don’t value-add, if you don’t beneficiate, then your exports will continue to fetch low, low prices. You will be exporting your wealth to other countries, to other continents.
So this is extremely important because once we build our wealth, once we build our economies on our own industries then we will have launched ourselves sustainably.
Of course, yes, industrialisation is extremely important, but for industrialisation to occur in a conducive environment you want to address the question of infrastructure, that is critical, infrastructure. You want your roads, your rail, your ICT, all these are absolutely essential in ensuring that our products get to where they should be. So industrialisation, infrastructure and then the productive sectors of our economies, will it be agriculture? Will it be mining? Will it be energy? All these need to be attended to.
One aspect that has always preoccupied His Excellency is the question of the funding of our programmes as the African Union . . .
Q: May I interrupt you, Cde Minister, you are talking of Agenda 2063, but there is an uncanny resemblance with Zim-Asset, what do you say about that? The congruence between the vision of Zimbabwe and the vision of the continent, value-addition, beneficiation, infrastructure and utilities; these are all tenets of Zim-Asset that have extended to the continent.
A: The development of Agenda 2063 is a result of the inputs by all member states of the African Union. Our Executive Council has held a number of retreats with one item on the agenda, to build the framework for Agenda 2063. What this meant is that we all made inputs into this Agenda 2063 and incorporated ideas which we found to be in the best interests of our continent, therefore the ideas that you correctly observe to also be contained in Zim-Asset.
Now Zim-Asset was not developed overnight, the ideas that are encapsulated in Zim-Asset have been in our party for quite some time, but the delay was very much, as you all know, caused by this thing that we called the inclusive Government. Had we not gone through that five years which many see as a five years during which our country’s development was arrested, Zim-Asset would have come out much sooner.
So in the formulation of Agenda 2063, the ideas that are now out as Zim-Asset, we already had and made our inputs into the development of Agenda 2063.
I want to tell you that to arrive at that programme of Agenda 2063, initially it was extremely difficult because even among us, members of the executive council, there were some who did not believe that push for the ownership of our resources was practical, but in the end we reached a consensus that this is the only way that we can be able to develop.
Yes we can work with other countries outside the continent, we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world but the question of ownership is extremely critical.
Q: And how does the precarious funding situation fit into all this?
A: This is extremely critical because of the old saying that whoever pays the piper calls the tune. This is very true. Now at present we have got this very sad, sad situation where only 28 percent of the budget of the African Union is paid by the 54 member states of the Union, the remaining 72 percent comes from those outside the continent whom we refer to as co-operating partners.
President Mugabe has made it very clear that this is totally unacceptable. A number of studies have been done as to how the African Union can be able to mobilise extra budgetary resources to be able to finance our development agenda.
So at this Summit, Summit has already adopted a resolution for the ways and means of raising additional resources in order to enable the organisation to be able to fund 100 percent of our running costs, at least 75 percent of our programme expenses, and at least 25 percent of our peacekeeping operations.
All this has to be done within a period of five years and we continue to build on it until we reach a situation where we can virtually finance our entire budget.
But the starting point is now, under the leadership of President Mugabe because this is an issue that is close to his heart, let us finance our own operations because being financed from outside creates a situation where the agenda for Africa may be dictated from outside, and you know how fiercely independent President Mugabe is.
He takes issues of independence and sovereignty extremely seriously as has been our experience in Zimbabwe.
Q: And the area of peace and security?
A: As you well know there is a nexus between peace and security on the one hand and development on the other. You cannot have development without peace and security, and you cannot have security without development.
The two are interconnected and interlinked and have to go side-by-side. So we may have all the plans that we want but unless we ensure that our continent enjoys peace and stability then all our plans will come to naught.
This (Saturday) morning the oversight mechanism for the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes Region was meeting under the chairmanship of the secretary-general of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon, and, as you know, in July last year the two regional organisations, Sadc and the Organisation of the Great Lakes Region, met and considered the offer by the rebels on the eastern part of the DRC to voluntarily surrender and they were given the deadline of the 2nd of January, the 2nd of January 2015 has come and gone, but only 25 percent of them have surrendered, and obviously now military action has to be considered.
In fact military action has already started against the rebels in the eastern part, the DRC armed forces, the UN forces there and very much the Sadc Intervention Brigade.
