SW Radio Africa news - The Independent Voice of Zimbabwe
ZANU PF has echoed threats voiced by its leader Robert Mugabe, to seek retaliatory action for the Western sanctions still in place against him and members of his regime. Mugabe last month threatened “tit for tat” action against Zim based companies from Britain and the US, if the Western powers maintained their targeted restrictive measures against his regime. The threat was then renewed this week by the ZANU PF spokesperson, Rugare Gumbo, in reaction to the US position that its sanctions policy will not be reviewed. In a statement to the NewsDay newspaper on Wednesday, US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Bruce Wharton said his government did not agree with the regional SADC Election Observer Mission report, which hailed the July 31st polls as “generally credible” and an “expression of the will of the people”. ZANU PF’s Gumbo was then quoted by the same newspaper as saying that his party was “not worried” about the sanctions. He then echoed Mugabe’s retaliation threat, saying: “When we take action on their companies, we will tell you.” Australia and the European Union (EU) have said they would only reconsider their sanctions policies after going through the full election reports by SADC and the African Union. Political analyst Clifford Mashiri told SW Radio Africa that he doubted that the other western nations would divert away from the US position, especially since the measures were imposed for issues like vote rigging, “These elections are not credible and you don’t need to look too closely to see that the elections were rigged. So the US position is the right one. The EU did say before that it would be guided by SADC, but that was just politicking and in this case they will not go against the US,” Mashiri said.