JOHANNESBURG, 30 June 2008 (IRIN) - If the Southern African Development Community (SADC) "wished to be taken seriously" it would have to declare Robert Mugabe's presidential claim illegitimate, a regional analyst told IRIN.

The United States and the European Union have condemned Mugabe's one-man presidential poll as a farce, but none of SADC's 14 member states have yet declared a position on the validity of Mugabe's presidential claim. So far the only African leader to endorse the result is Gabon's President Omar Bongo, who has ruled the oil-producing state since 1967 and is the continent's longest serving head of state.

Mugabe, 84, has been Zimbabwe's only head of state since the country won its independence from Britain in 1980, but came off second best in the first round of voting for the presidency on 29 March. The few election monitors permitted to observe the presidential run-off on 27 June have roundly condemned the exercise for the high levels of violence ahead of the poll.

The African Union (AU) observer mission monitoring the election condemned the poll in its report released on 30 June at the AU summit in the Egyptian coastal resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, saying that conditions "fell short of the African Union's standards of democratic elections", following a similar stance by SADC observers.

Andre du Pisani, a professor of politics at the University of Namibia and expert on the region, told IRIN: "If SADC wants to be taken seriously it will have to respect its own charter," and adhere to its election protocols. "It would make eminent sense to take the advice [of SADC election monitors that the poll was not free and fair] very seriously."

Du Pisani said the "logic" would be that if SADC accepted the report of its observers, it could not declare Mugabe's presidency legitimate.

SADC's dilemna

A statement by the office of South African President Thabo Mbeki in response to media reports that South Africa would recognise Mugabe's election victory, said: "South Africa will consider the reports of the SADC and other observer teams which monitored the elections and adopt a position together with member states."

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - whose leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of the election after more than 80 people had been killed and as many as 200,000 people displaced in pre-voting violence - believes that Mbeki, appointed by the SADC to mediate between Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the MDC, is not an honest broker, and is calling for an additional mediator.

Mukoni Ratshitanga, Mbeki's spokesman, told IRIN in reply to written questions "that any decision to add more members to the mediation would have to be decided upon by SADC".

Du Pisani said the SADC was facing its most "profound challenge" since 1992, when the binding treaty of member states was signed and the organisation's capacity, which had grown out of its original formation as a trading bloc between nation states, had probably not evolved sufficiently to act as a mediator.

"The traditional approach of mediating with third parties may not be adequate, and a collaborative approach is needed," he said, noting that a resolution to the Zimbabwean impasse would probably only be achieved with the use of multiple agencies.

Du Pisani said Zimbabwe was presenting the region with "serious consequences", should the situation not be resolved, which would affect the ability of SADC member states to meet the Millennium Development Goals and its own agenda, such as entrenching democracy, human development and common security.

Ratshitanga said in his written replies to IRIN's questions that "I am aware of no SADC analysis that has reached the conclusion that 'Zimbabwe threatens to destabilise the ... region'. Of importance are efforts intended to ensure that the situation in that country does not destabilise the region."

Since 2000, more than three million people are thought to have fled Zimbabwe's economic meltdown and political repression, mainly to neighbouring states such as South Africa, Botswana and Zambia. More than 80 percent of Zimbabweans are unemployed and annual inflation is estimated at more than two million percent.

Some analysts have attributed recent xenophobic violence in South Africa, which claimed scores of lives and displaced thousands, as a consequence of undocumented Zimbabwean migrants seeking work.

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