MNANGAGWA: JPM PUSHED FOR LIFTING ZIM SANCTIONS

AfricaPress-Tanzania: ZIMBABWE President Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday in Dodoma eulogised the late President John Magufuli as a true Pan-Africanist who openly opposed and appealed for lifting of sanctions imposed on his country. In his moving speech, President Mnangagwa said during Magufuli’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairmanship from August 2019 to August 2020, he rallied the bloc regional leaders towards deepening cooperation and collectively calling for Zimbabwe’s US and EU sanctions to be “immediately lifted.”

“This policy (read sanctions) should be lifted because Zimbabwe, under President Mnangagwa, had opened a ‘new chapter’. These sanctions have not only affected the people of Zimbabwe and their government but the entire region. It is like a human body, when you chop one of its parts, it affects the whole body.

“Therefore, I would like to seize this opportunity to urge the international community to lift sanctions it imposed on Zimbabwe. “This brotherly country after all has now opened a new chapter and it is ready to engage with the rest of the world. It is therefore, I believe, in the interest of all parties concerned to see these sanctions removed,” he quoted Dr Magufuli as having said.

Adding: “SADC, especially Zimbabwe, will remember Dr Magufuli for his practical inclusive development skills, unwavering stance while calling for partnership and jobs’ creation to the youth. In Tanzania, the departed hero supported the country’s climb in economic rank onto a middle economy state earlier than projected.

“I remember on the night of 14-15 March 2019, Cyclone Idai hit in Beira, Mozambique, killing over 1,000 people across Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe and leaving 2.6 million people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. In the middle of the night, I heard a persistent phone call, and I realised it was Dr Magufuli calling to sympathize with us…he asked me, my brother, what assistance can Tanzania offer you immediately? “I answered, we urgently need foodstuffs, medicine, blankets and mosquito nets, and to my surprise in the morning, a plane loaded with the items landed in Harare. This was a man who walked his talk,” he added.

President Mnangagwa, who came into office in 2017 after the army ousted his predecessor, Robert Mugabe further touched mourners on how Dr Magufuli travelled to Zimbabwe and later to South Africa with boxes full of Kiswahili books, insisting on SADC countries to learn the language and incorporate it in their curriculums.

“May I encourage President Samia Suluhu Hassan to realise that she is not alone during these sad days. She should be free to consult with us when necessary, because Tanzania means a lot to us. This is the country that sacrificed to see into it that neighbouring countries also become independent from the colonial yoke and engage in their sovereign affairs. We see Tanzania as our parent in the liberation… Magufuli showed that Africa could do it without foreign aid from donors in developed countries. We are able as Africans to manage our economy and ensure citizens get their rights.”

The sanctions imposed in the country in 2002 when Mugabe was president have continued to cripple development, raise inflation and shortages of basic supplies such as fuel and electricity, and further worsened in March, 2019 by US President Donald Trump’s administration extending them again by a year.

Once the sanctions are fully removed, Zimbabwe will again recover its glory, attract Western investors and enhance its economic growth, whose trickle over will also benefit o