Zimbabwe’s foreign minister said Friday that the government had invited a special regional task force to the country to counter what it calls negative propaganda.
Stan Mudenge told a press conference that a task force of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was due to visit Zimbabwe, but said it was not as a result of a meeting of regional foreign ministers held in the capital, Harare on Thursday.
Mozambique Foreign Minister Leornado Simao, who chairs the SADC organ on politics, defence and security that met on Thursday, had said the task force would come to the country next week to look into issues in Zimbabwe, including claims of human rights abuses against the opposition.
But Mudenge told reporters the task force was coming at his invitation.
”All is my initiative and my strategy,” Mudenge said.
The minister said this was ”to ensure that my colleagues in SADC, who are subjected to so much propaganda, a lot of it untrue, do come and get a better view, and a better impression of the situation in Zimbabwe.”
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has been issuing daily reports of alleged human rights abuses against its supporters, mainly in the politically tense, low income suburbs of Harare.
The MDC recently retained two Harare suburban seats after hard-fought by-elections that President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean African National Union — Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) had vowed to take back.
On Thursday the MDC issued a statement urging the SADC ministers gathered in Harare to condemn the alleged human rights abuses against its members.
Mudenge told reporters that Thursday’s meeting also resolved to get SADC to make representation to the European Union (EU) to lift targetted sanctions against the Zimbabwe government for its alleged abuse of democracy and human rights.
The sanctions include a ban on Mugabe and 71 of his associates from entering EU territory. Mudenge said SADC would ”engage the European Union, with the objective of peruading the EU to remove its so-called smart sanctions against Zimbabwe.” – Sapa-AFP