The European Union has suspended targeted sanctions against eight Zimbabwean government officials on Monday but has kept the restrictive embargos in place on President Robert Mugabe and his wife, Grace, according to various reports.
The move had targeted the most powerful military and political figures in the country. The EU, a 28-nation body that has gradually eased sanctions over the last few years to encourage political reform, had implemented the sanctions in 2002 because of issues relating to poor governance and human-rights abuses, according to an article by Reuters.
Zimbabwe’s head of delegation to the African-Caribbean-Pacific and EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly Makhosini Hlongwane said any claims made by the EU that it would lift standing travel bans are incorrect due to the need for economic reform, reported Zimbabwe’s largest newspaper The Herald.
The five-member EU delegation was in Zimbabwe on a fact-finding mission on the impact of sanctions.
The Reuters article also said EU ministers would be taking up the idea of funneling development resources directly to the government of Zimbabwe beginning in 2015, which comes on the heels of years of using charities to aid the floundering government. Zimbabwe has suffered for years under Mugabe’s rule, with the country ranking at the top of the world’s list of countries with the highest rates of inflation.
For years the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front, the official ruling party, headed by Mugabe, sought to blame the country’s economic decline on these restrictive measures.
Currently in Singapore for an eye operation, according to a separate Reuters piece on Tuesday, some wonder how much longer the despot will remain in power.
A June 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks said Mugabe had prostate cancer that had spread to other organs, according to various reports.
He was apparently urged by his physician to step down in 2008 but has remained in the job.
Mugabe, who came to power when Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980, is one of Africa’s longest serving leaders.
In an interview ahead of his 89th birthday last year Mugabe said he felt he had a “divine task” to lead, Reuters reported. He to contested and won another five-year presidential term last July that will end in 2018 when he will be 94.
EU countries were divided in their response when Mugabe won the last election, his fifth term, that was endorsed as free by African observers but denounced as being fraught with errors by the opposition, who claimed it was rigged.
Mugabe has reportedly said his stay in power is intended to serve the struggle for liberation and black economic empowerment. When he came to power, he instituted a policy of seizing white-owned commercial farms for blacks and eventually forced foreign-owned firms to surrender their majority shares, according to Reuters.
But it remains unclear if his party followers and underlings are simply waiting for him to die, so Zimbabwe can be re-opened to the Western world.
“The EU has held out an olive branch to Mugabe by inviting him to take part in an EU-Africa summit in Brussels in April and granting him an exemption from sanctions to visit Europe,” Reuters said.
It remains to be seen if the easing of the sanctions will work or if Mugabe chooses to take a path toward improving his country.