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Church leaders have urged the leaders of the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) to press Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe to abide by the results of the March 29 general elections. However, democracy activists fear little of substance will come from the April 12-13 emergency summit in Zambia.

Anglican bishops from nine African countries meeting in Pretoria on April 11 released a statement urging the SADC to “prevail upon” President Mugabe to honor the rule of law, AFP reported. “We are concerned that this situation has given rise to rumour and uncertainty which are bound to fuel despondency, tension and social upheaval,” the bishops said

The urged the SADC heads of state to intensify the diplomatic efforts led by South African President Thabo Mbeki to end the stalemate and urged the UN and African Union to send envoys to Harare.

On Friday, World Council of Churches general secretary Dr. Samuel Kobia stated it was “the sovereign right of the people of Zimbabwe to choose their leaders, define the future of their country and insist upon a peaceful transition.”

Writing to the President of Zambia Levy Mwanawasa on April 11, Dr. Kobia thanked him for convening the emergency summit to “address the growing political crisis paralysing life and safety in Zimbabwe.”

The World Council of Churches believes “this [meeting] will help to peacefully resolve the current political impasse.”

However, Moeletsi Mbeki, a political economist and the deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, said he expected little to be accomplished.

“SADC has given ZANU-PF [Zimbabwe's ruling party] comfort to do what it is doing,” he told the IRIN news agency last week.

Zimbabwe’s MDC opposition party was a threat not only to Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party but to South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), Angola’s MPLA government and other SADC governments as it was democratic movement while most SADC governments were “nationalist parties, created by black elites during the colonial era, who saw themselves as colonial equals. They see themselves as superior to the black masses.”

The summit was most likely called by the SADC governments as a result of international pressure, not in reaction to the Zimbabwe political crisis, he noted.

The call issued by the weekend meeting for South African President Thabo Mbeki to continue his mediation efforts was challenged by Zimbabwean democracy activists. “For the SADC to have mandated President Mbeki to continue with the (facilitation) exercise, that is the joke of the year,” said Wellington Chibebe of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions on April 14.

Irene Petras of Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights told the South African Press Association that President Mbeki’s insistence that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe revealed a “measure of dishonesty.”

“There is a constitutional crisis; there is no parliament that can pass any laws, we have a caretaker president who cannot act with any legitimate powers, we have an election process which is in disarray,” she said, adding that “there is no separation of power and the rule of law is under attack especially through the use of political violence.”

“I think any reasonable person would see there is a crisis which should be addressed in an honest manner, and it needs to be addressed urgently,” Ms. Petras said.