*SACP Statement on the recent developments in Zimbabwe*

*16 April 2008*

The SACP has been closely following events in Zimbabwe, including the
circumstances surrounding the recently held national elections. We wish
to join our allies, the ANC and COSATU, in expressing our concern in how
these political developments are unfolding. We are extremely worried and
strongly condemn the ZEC`s clandestine management and failure to
announce all the results, more than two weeks after voting. There is
every merit to the insistence that all election results be expeditiously
announced. The SACP fully supports such a call.

Consistent with the past SACP principled perspectives, our view is that
current day Zimbabwe represents a post-colonial aberration of national
democratic objectives of transformation, in which popular aspirations
are deferred, in the interest of narrowly elitist accumulation projects
of a small bureaucratic stratum and the most parasitic sections of the
ruling class.

The SACP remains convinced that the principal cause of the deteriorating
situation in Zimbabwe is that of a degenerating national liberation
movement, which once fought a heroic struggle, but now paying the price
of being trapped in state power that is not buttressed by the people`s
will.

The intransigence of not releasing the results, and the deployment of
police and the army within communities, represents the growing
alienation of sections of the Zimbabwean elites from control and
monopoly of bureaucratic state power.

It is important that South Africa and SADC, does not pander to the whims
of the Zimbabwean elites, and should allow the realization of democratic
aspirations of the poor people of Zimbabwe. Otherwise this sets a
terribly bad precedent for the SADC region, if not the African continent
as a whole.

Failure to release the election results is tantamount to stealing the
elections from the people and risks whatever little credibility that ZEC
still had.

The SACP reiterates its principled solidarity support to the suffering
people of Zimbabwe and calls for an end to the crisis.

*Issued by the SACP.*