OPINION: It is time for SADC leaders to decisively confront resource-based conflicts in the region. Key to this is the overdue need to strengthen regional transparency and accountability mechanisms in the extractive sector, writes Boaventura Monjane and Janet Zhou.
The Southern African People’s Solidarity Network (SAPSN) is disappointed by regional leaders’ failure to confront the greed, corruption and climate destruction at the centre of the natural resource conflict in Cabo Delgado Province in Mozambique.
The collective failure of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to conclusively support humanitarian and ecological needs at this critical time brings into question SADC leaders’ collective resolve to contribute to the achievement of lasting peace in Mozambique.
This is unacceptable, as so many of our people are suffering, and as the combined impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate crisis bears down on all of us, especially civilians caught between repressive forces.
There is an urgent need to reimagine SADC defence and security co-operation arrangements. These must begin with a roadmap for genuine sustainable development in order to respond to complex and intersecting challenges in the region.
The urgent call by the World Health Organization to address basic-need shortfalls for 1.2 million people in northern Mozambique is foremost in our minds.
SADC institutions, including respected civil society forces that provide emergency relief, must be capacitated to assist a Maputo government whose armed forces, finance ministry and bureaucracy are struggling to address the broader impacts of the conflict.
Many of our members question the very legitimacy of military interventionism to resolve conflicts. We therefore call for the demilitarisation of Northern Mozambique.
South African mercenaries, from the Dyck Action Group and the Paramount Group, must therefore be sent home forthwith, given their chequered recent histories. Some SADC armies – not just the Mozambican FDS – have been implicated in reports of human rights abuses against civilians, with inadequate accountability and compensation systems when human rights are violated.
The Eswatini army has been shooting its young democracy protesters. And three other SADC armies have been implicated in offering services to dictatorial regimes, so that their own home-country ruling elites gain benefits from mineral, oil and gas extraction: the Zimbabwe Defence Forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1998; the Angolan Armed Forces in Cabinda since 2004; and the SANDF in the Central African Republic in 2012-13 and the DRC since 2013. The other army in Mozambique, Rwanda’s, also serves a dictatorship.
We agree with one SADC communique that addressing “terrorism and ensures lasting peace and security in Mozambique” is vital.
The Mozambican government and especially the people of Mozambique require support so that the deep-rooted underlying conditions of underdevelopment that lie behind the insurgency are resolved.
While Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has requested US, French and Portuguese military support, in the absence of a SADC-guaranteed framework for diplomatic engagement to seek political-economic and ecological solutions, the risks worsening the conflict.
The record of the US-led “war on terror” and European military adventures in areas rich with fossil fuels is appalling, and for decades and indeed centuries, Africa has repeatedly witnessed armies from these countries committing atrocities. We are especially mindful of the loss and damages caused by greenhouse gas emissions, extractivism and climate chaos in Mozambique and across Africa.
Economically, these have been counter-productive investments. Angola, South Africa, the DRC, Zimbabwe and Mozambique are especially hard-hit in net economic terms.
The International Energy Agency (within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) recently stated that no further fossil fuel development – including gas – could be tolerated if the Paris Climate Agreement targets were to be met and catastrophic climate change was to be avoided.
The SAPSN therefore calls on Total, ExxonMobil, ENI, China National Petroleum Corporation, SASOL and all other transnational corporations, suppliers, purchasers and investors to divest from conflict-ridden gas extraction Projects in Cabo Delgado.
The just and acceptable resolution of the legitimate grievances of communities and the Mozambican citizenry in Cabo Delgado must also be addressed by these firms and their governments, since so many of the emissions causing Mozambique Channel heating – and in turn, the recent intensification of cyclones (such as the 225km/h Cyclone Kenneth that in 2019 devastated northern Mozambique) – emanate from them.
We repeat our demand for a climate debt to be paid by the people of Cabo Delgado and all affected people in our region.
It is time for SADC leaders to decisively confront resource-based conflicts in the region. Key to this is the overdue need to strengthen regional transparency and accountability mechanisms in the extractive sector.
This will require the publication of all relevant contracts, and the establishment of minimum standards to regulate taxation, human rights (including future generations’ rights to access natural wealth), and corporate governance associated with the extractive industries in Southern Africa, while envisioning and rapidly implementing a just and equitable, post-extractive future.
Anything less risks another Afghanistan.
* Boaventura Monjane is a Mozambican scholar-activist, postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies), co-founder and director of Alternactiva –Acção pela Emancipação Social, a Mozambique popular education collective.
** Janet Zhou is a human rights defender. executive director of the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development and general secretary of the Southern African Peoples’ Solidarity Network.
*** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL and Independent Media.
Insider