The South African Development Community, comprising all of Zimbabwe’s neighbors, have called an emergency summit to discuss the standoff over the election they supervised. Unfortunately, the SADC may have just as much credibility as Robert Mugabe in this crisis, considering their role in legitimizing the polling:

Zimbabwe’s neighbours have announced that they will hold an emergency summit to discuss the country’s election crisis.

The gathering of the leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Zambia on Saturday is a sign that President Robert Mugabe’s regional allies may fear that his conduct does not reflect well on them in the eyes of the international community.

Why might that be? Well, the SADC has had its lips planted on Mugabe’s backside for so long that it might take a surgeon to remove them. Before the election that created this crisis, Mugabe booted out all of the election observers from the West in favor of SADC monitors. They promptly responded by declaring the election as “peaceful and credible” without waiting for Mugabe to publish the results.

Now the SADC wants to get the stink of Mugabe’s corruption off themselves with this “emergency summit”. If they had the interests of Zimbabweans instead of Mugabe in mind, they wouldn’t have issued an asinine endorsement of the election in the first place. In fact, they would have taken action to press for Mugabe’s long-overdue election years ago, when his destructive policies started resulting in inflation rates above 100%, instead of waiting for them to hit 150,000%.

Now, with reports of hit squads targeting voters in opposition-friendly districts, the disaster of Zimbabwe won’t just fall on Mugabe’s shoulders. When Mugabe falls through resignation or throuh violent overthrow, Zimbabweans will start asking very tough questions of those who enabled Mugabe’s dictatorship to survive. The SADC will be among those who need to provide some answers.