Harare (New Ziana) – President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Tuesday criticised Britain for its self confessed interference in Zimbabwe’s political affairs on the side of the opposition, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) opposed to the government.
The criticism follows an admission last week by a top British government official that the UK was liaising with trade unions and other anti-government groups in Zimbabwe in clandestine plots to dislodge the ruling party from power.
For two decades now, Britain – Zimbabwe’s colonial power – has mobilised its allies in Europe and founded and funded political and trade union groups here in the vain attempt so far to remove the ZANU-PF government.
Britain’s anger with Zimbabwe followed the latter’s compulsory acquisition in the early 2 000s of excess farmland from white farmers – the majority of British stoke – to resettle landless blacks.
Speaking in the British House of Lords last week, British junior minister in charge of Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Tariq Mahmood, said the UK was working with Zimbabwean trade unions and other groups to oppose its government, specifically naming local teachers’ unions.
This explains persistent calls by various teachers’ union leaders for industrial action over a range of issues, particularly salaries, timed to coincide with critical times on the education calendar, such as examination periods.
President Mnangagwa said Mahmood’s admission of his government’s involvement in the teachers’ union anti-government plots, and the whole debate on Zimbabwe in the House of Lord, was gross interference in the internal affairs of the country, and would be investigated.
“Only last week, our country Zimbabwe became a subject of unmerited focus and debate in the British House of Lords. In the ensuing debate by that foreign legislative body with no jurisdiction over our country, a junior minister of Her Majesty’s government in charge of Commonwealth and Development Office, one Mister Tariq Mahmood, revealed that Her Majesty’s government has been meeting in Harare with various (trade) unions, including teaching unions, most recently in September 2021 on salaries and the impact of Covid-19,” he said.
“To us, this brazen disclosure was yet another confirmation of very gross, unwarranted and blatant interference in the domestic affairs of our country by the British government, contrary to rules and precepts of the Geneva Conventions which regulate inter-state relations,” he added.
He said the matter would be investigated, and possible action taken to safeguard the country’s security.
New Ziana