Own Correspondent | President Donald Trump’s administration has piled pressure on President Emmerson Mnangagwa to end corruption and “work with the people not against them.”

The United States’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement on Twitter:“The economic crisis in #Zimbabwe is causing its citizens great hardship. It’s time for the #Mnangagwa government to work with, not against, its people to end corruption and implement reforms to restore the economy and end the suffering of its people.”

The impasse between the US and Zimbabwe continues, one of the sticky points being the demand by the US that land be returned to its ‘rightful owners.’ A symposium in held Pretoria, last week, to chart the way for South Africa’s intervention in the lifting of sanctions heard that Zimbabwe is not going to accede to this condition.

‘They want us to return the land to those who used to own it, but as the President (Emmerson Mnangagwa) has said, there is no reversal of the land reform,’ Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to SA David Hamadziripi told the meeting.

During Zanu PF’s anti-sanctions march last month the US ambassador to Zimbabwe Brian Nichols dismissed the government’s claims that Western-imposed sanctions were the root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic implosion.
Following an unspecified threat on Nichols by Foreign Affairs minister Sibusiso Moyo, the US Senate committee chaired by Senator Jim Risch (Republican-Idaho) said:

“The US is deeply committed to the people of Zimbabwe. Ambassador Nichols set the record straight that culpability for Zimbabwe’s dire economic situation rests with its leaders, provided the truth about sanctions, and reiterated our strong and lasting commitment to a free and open Zimbabwe.”