SA President and UK Prime Minister On Zimbabwe sanctions
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited newly appointed UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday, with the goal of convincing him to ease sanctions placed on Zimbabwe.
His special assistant on foreign relations, Maropene Ramokgopa, informed South African media that Zimbabwe’s general elections in 2023 were on Ramaphosa’s agenda with the incoming British prime minister.
She stated:
They (sanctions) are affecting SA in a very difficult way. The reason there is a lot of migration from Zimbabwe is because people are running away from economic hardships. It’s not because they want to leave home, and the sanctions are not assisting in any way. So we’d like them to look at it differently.
Britain and the European Union slapped sanctions on Zimbabwe around the turn of the millennium, when the government led by then-President Robert Mugabe embarked on a rapid land reform program that resulted in serious human rights breaches.
Mugabe’s regime has also been accused of election tampering.
In September of this year, Ramaphosa met with US President Joe Biden and encouraged him to ease sanctions placed by the superpower on Zimbabwe in 2001.
South Africa, which shares a border with Zimbabwe, claims responsibility for its neighbor’s economic disaster, which it blames on sanctions.
According to a recent Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency study, there are 773 246 Zimbabwean citizens residing in South Africa.
Meanwhile, the West disputes that sanctions are to blame for the downfall of Zimbabwe’s once-vibrant economy. They blame the deterioration on mismanagement by the government ZANU PF.