by SAVIOUS KWINIKA
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – LIBERATION movements in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) regional bloc have completed their summit with a pledge to now focus on economic liberation, decades after political liberation.
They are under pressure from youthful populations demanding emancipation and at the same time face political sanctions from the Western world as they attempt to redress colonial imbalances.
At the same time, these parties are contending with merging opposition parties that are threatening their stranglehold on power.
South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) hosted the parties from Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
These are, respectively, Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
Liberation movements from such countries as Botswana and Zambia were conspicuous with their absence as they have since been removed from power by emerging parties.
At the conclusion of the Liberation Movements Summit 2025, the parties made a bold statement in the face of prevailing challenges.
It touched on the geopolitical tensions currently underway.
“We placed economic sovereignty at the centre: land reform, beneficiation, regional value chains and domestic industrialisation,” said Fikile Mbalula, chairperson of the summit.
He is also the Secretary-General of the under-fire ANC.
The parties reaffirmed their ideological anchor, which is Pan-Africanism, non-alignment and progressive internationalism.
Thus, they stood in “unwavering solidarity” with Palestine, Western Sahara, Cuba and Zimbabwe.
Such a stance has put SADC and most prominently, South Africa, at odds with the Western world and the United States government of President Donald Trump.
Last week, American legislators voted to advance a bill that proposes reviewing the US relationship with South Africa due to objections over its foreign policy and potentially imposing sanctions on South African officials deemed to be violating human rights.
This is the aftermath of a fallout between the two countries over land reforms.
Most prime land in South Africa remains in the hands of the white minority, more than 30 years after the end of apartheid.
In addition, most Southern African countries align with China and Russia- America’s fierce rivals- due to the Chinese and Russians’ ties with Africa during the fight against colonialism.
“We must recognise that our political independence is incomplete without economic justice. It is incomplete without land reform, industrialisation, manufacturing, beneficiation and the creation of jobs for our youth,” said South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa.
The liberation movements placed economic sovereignty at the centre of the way forward, focusing on land reform, beneficiation, regional value chains and domestic industrialisation as well as climate justice and gender justice.
Youth empowerment was recognised as central to the party’s survival.
“If we fail to pass the baton, we will drop the revolution,” Mbalula said.
ANC and fellow liberation parties are under pressure from youth to address economic problems.
“We have revisited the epic chapters of our past but more importantly we have confronted the present crises and envisioned a future rooted in justice and liberation. The summit was not symbolic. It produced a declaration and programme of action grounded in revolutionary praxis,” Mbalula said.
Commentators voiced displeasure at the liberation movements for their failure to emancipate locals post-independence.
South Africa, in 1994, was the last country in the SADC bloc to attain independence.
“Unfortunately our liberation movements have done huge damage on the people they liberated,” lamented Mruva Gevane.
“Now they (citizens) run all over the places, swallowed by sharks, eaten by lions, bitten by snakes and drown in rivers and the Mediterranean Sea. They are chased away all over,” he added.
SADC is contending with a migration crisis, mostly the exodus of Zimbabweans to neighbouring countries after the nation’s crisis blamed on ZANU-PF, in power since 1980, and Western sanctions, in place since the early 2000s after the government embarked on a controversial land redistribution programme.
South Africa is bearing the brunt of the wave of Zimbabweans fleeing their country, resulting in xenophobic tensions in the former.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe, speaking at the summit, accused Western nations and the United States of neocolonialism through interference and sabotage.
“The infrastructure that denied us democracy and independence has mutated and expresses itself in numerous forms,” said Mnangagwa, outgoing chairperson of SADC.
– CAJ News