South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has “made great progress” in resolving peace and security disputes in the past year, APA learnt on Friday.
Speaking after returning from the two-day 42nd SADC Summit that ended in the Democratic Republic of Congo capital Kinshasa on Thursday, Ramaphosa said he was pleased with the reform process going on in Lesotho whose report Prime Minister Moeketsi Majoro tabled at the summit “to serve as a real milestone in the lives of the Basotho.”
SADC and South Africa played an important role in bringing about peace and normalcy in the troubled kingdom, he noted.
Among other developments at the summit was a report that SADC had pushed back the insurgents in Cabo Delgado province of northern Mozambique which had reaffirmed the grouping’s “total commitment to supporting the people of Mozambique.
“The pleasing thing was that the people who had fled the various areas in Cabo Delgado are now returning to their homes, with increased confidence, that SADC has been helping them to bring about peace,” Ramaphosa said.
SADC also made progress in setting up a Logistics Centre in Botswana that would assist the countries in the region to deal with emergency situations, he said.
“We will be able to bring around the various assistance measures when there are situations where our armed forces need to intervene in any of our member states,” Ramaphosa said about the Botswana logistics centre.
Ramaphosa was also pleased with the progress made in the already operational anti-terrorism centre in Tanzania.
SADC also recorded progress on issues in Eswatini, where it set up a fact-finding mission “to go and find effective ways to deal with the situation” in the kingdom.
Eswatini recently faced democratic protests nationwide, with demands of the monarch to open up the country to multiparty politics.
Meanwhile, DRC President Félix Tshisekedi Tshilombo has been elected chairperson of SADC for a year, taking over from his Malawian counterpart Lazarus Chakwera.
NM/jn/APA