President Mnangagwa hints Covid-19 lockdown review

Harare(New Ziana)-President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Friday hinted at re-tightening the nationwide Covid-19 induced lockdown following a recent spike in new infections.

On March 30 this year President Mnangagwa declared a total Covid-19 lockdown in Zimbabwe for an initial 21 days to better prepare the country to combat the pandemic which had started wrecking havoc throughout the world.

The measures were later relaxed as the government sought to balance health and economic interests and currently the country is under level 2 of the lockdown for an indefinite period.

As at Friday, Zimbabwe had 961 confirmed cases of Covid-19 including 12 deaths since the onset of the outbreak on 20 March 2020.

Addressing an ordinary session of the ruling Zanu PF politburo, President Mnangagwa said the rapid rise in Covid-19 infections required another review of the lockdown regulations.

“The recent rapid spike of infections require that we make another review of the Covid-19 lockdown measures soon,” he said adding, “the strategies we adopted to curb the spread of Covid-19 pandemic have to date yielded positive results.”

He said the country would continue to strengthen preventive measures, testing and contact tracing.

President Mnangagwa warned groups pushing for government workers to go on strike.

“We continue to see acts that seek to out rightly destabilise the peace, unity and harmony we are enjoying, in particular through the use of platforms in the health, education and security sectors. We shall never quiver or capitulate in the face of these machinations,” he said.

“I challenge those who purport to represent workers to do just that. It is a one way traffic lane. Political ambitions and views belong to another lane,” he said.

He warned civil society organisations to stick to their mandate, or risk being de-registered.

“Those who deviate from their mandate will attract de-registration,” he said.

President Mnangagwa also warned foreign embassies against interfering in the internal affairs of the country.

“Some of our guests of the state, our foreign embassies are reminded that Zimbabwe is an independent and sovereign nation. They are once again dissuaded from interfering in our internal affairs and should stop forthwith the funding of destabilisation activities,” he said.

Some fringe political parties including the Jacob Ngarivume-led Transform Zimbabwe have indicated that they would hold street protests on July 31 this year.

New Ziana