Harare | Wednesday
ZIMBABWE’S President Robert Mugabe won a pat on the back on Wednesday from visiting African ministers when they ended talks by backing his land reforms and opposing potential sanctions imposed by the West.
Ministers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) ”welcomed the legislative and other mechanisms the government was putting in place to guard against violence and to ensure transparency” ahead of March elections.
The embattled Mugabe, who has run Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 and has come under increasing fire for stifling dissent, on Tuesday announced that a presidential poll will be held in March next year but gave no precise date.
SADC ministers concluded two days of talks with a statement in which they also ”expressed their concern at the distorted and negative perceptions of Zimbabwe projected by the international and regional media”.
Ministers ”expressed their concern at the distorted and negative perceptions of Zimbabwe projected by the international and regional media”.
They reiterated their opposition to efforts to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe for alleged rights abuses.
The communique, issued early on Wednesday, stood in sharp contrast to recent statements from European, South African and US officials, who have warned of a breakdown of law in Zimbabwe. The US House of Representatives had endorsed a bill proposing sanctions.
Mugabe’s government has proposed legislation that would ban foreign journalists and require Zimbabwean journalists to adhere to a strict code of conduct.
Another ”anti-terrorism” bill, which threatens the death penalty for anyone convicted of acts of ”insurgency, banditry, sabotage and terrorism,” is widely perceived as a tool to crack down on the opposition party.
Speaking to state media on Tuesday, Malawi’s Foreign Minister Lilian Patel said that SADC supports Mugabe’s plans to seize mainly white-owned commercial farmland to benefit the black majority – a programme which has been wracked by violence for almost two years.
”We are not being influenced by the West,” Patel said.
”We have come here as SADC, not under some Western forces to demonise Zimbabwe.”
The two-day talks came three months after a heads of state summit in Harare, where Mugabe had assured his counterparts that he would rein in the violence.
This week’s follow-up meeting was attended by ministers from Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. – Sapa-AFP
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