President Jacob Zuma began his three-day state visit to the United Kingdom on Wednesday with a call for international sanctions on Zimbabwe to be lifted.
Zuma told reporters in London that the travel bans and asset freezes imposed by the European Union and the United States on Robert Mugabe and his allies served only to divide the already fragile power-sharing government in Zimbabwe.
Repeating calls by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) for a suspension of the sanctions, Zuma said: “Our view is that the unity government should be supported so that it can get out of the difficulties that face Zimbabwe … We plead with the countries that have applied sanctions to lift [them]. That would give Zimbabwe the opportunity to move forward.”
US President Barack Obama announced on Monday he was extending US sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s regime for another year, saying Zimbabwe’s deep political crisis remained unresolved. This comes weeks after the EU also voted in favour of maintaining sanctions against Mugabe and his associates.
Zuma said Zimbabwe could not be expected to sort out its problems while its power-sharing overnment, made up of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, was subject to two different sets of rules.
The Southern African country is struggling to recover from a crisis that saw inflation peak at 321-million percent and supermarkets run out of food, and the formation of the power-sharing government last year has done little to ease the political tension.
“It’s going to be difficult [for the government] to get on with other matters if there are sanctions, because sanctions are one-sided,” he said. “We have a government that’s not treated equally by sanctions. Those who cannot travel freely feel that they are constrained.”
Zuma said in a Financial Times interview last week that South Africa had been “one of the major players that actually pulled Zimbabwe back from getting into a disaster”, while Europe and the US had ignored the new reality in maintaining sanctions.
‘We are going to surprise you’
The president, who will meet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on Wednesday, also found time to address the South African football team’s lacklustre performance in the run-up to this year’s Soccer World Cup.
“We are going to surprise you,” he said. “Our standards came down a little bit, but we have worked hard. The only weakness was not scoring goals, and we have fixed that. The World Cup may remain in South Africa.”
Zuma’s aides, however, were less forthcoming on how the polygamous president had decided which of his three current wives would accompany him to the UK. In the end, his newest bride, Thobeka Madiba Zuma, has accompanied him. Protocol on which wife attends which state event is unclear in South Africa, since Zuma operates an unofficial “rotation” between spouses.
“We are an open democracy,” said a spokesperson. “We do not have a first lady — what if we had a gay president? We have a spousal office. Who accompanies the president is for him to decide. It’s a private matter.”
Speculation in the South African press has suggested that the president considered the trip to London, his new wife’s first foreign engagement as consort, as her turn. Zuma is a strong defender of Zulu cultural traditions including polygamy and is rumoured to be planning a sixth wedding. —