President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has rubbished the lifting of an EU travel ban on the new Africa Union chairman, Mugabe, saying it is inconsequential.
ZANU PF is demanding that Mugabe must be freed to roam around anywhere he wills in Europe.
Commenting on the adjustments to the restrictive measures, Zanu-PF spokesman Simon Khaya-Moyo said the EU has moved to avert a major confrontation with Africa by lifting the ban.
This would have meant Mugabe, who is also chairman of the Southern African Development Community, would fail to travel to Europe on AU business.
Khaya-Moyo complained saying that the EU should allow Mugabe to roam anywhere in Europe.
“The illegal sanctions imposed on President Mugabe by the EU were so done in his capacity as President and Head of State of Zimbabwe and not as chairperson of the African Union.
“The announcement is inconsequential. Our position as Zanu-PF remains that all sanctions imposed on President Mugabe as Head of State and citizen of Zimbabwe be removed unconditionally. Any effort to hoodwink the continent is futile.”
Mugabe assumed the AU chairmanship at the continental body’s summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last week, replacing Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. He will hold the position for the next year.
The EU sanctions have been modified over the years. From an initial blacklist of over 100 government officials and companies who were targeted, only President Mugabe and the First Lady, Grace, remain.
Information minister Professor Jonathan Moyo believes Britain is desperate to surrender the yoke of sanctions “which it has carried awkwardly”, and “might just have found an easy way out”.
“It appears the EU, obviously influenced by Britain, has gone ahead of everything and everyone and made President Mugabe’s travel to Europe a non-issue,” he said last night.
In 2011, Moyo said Britain was struggling to find a way of lifting the sanctions on Zimbabwe and President Mugabe without appearing to be conceding defeat.
“The British problem,” he said, “is that they behave like a drunkard who climbed a tree overnight then woke up naked and couldn’t get down.”
Zimbabwe, he went on, was “prepared to give them a ladder, and a blanket, but it’s up to them whether they climb down at night, or during the day.”
Yesterday, Prof Moyo said President Mugabe’s new role as chair of the African Union had provided the EU with “a ladder and some clothes to dress up and come down”.