* Sanctions seen as ineffective
* Zimbabwe’s future has high stakes for South Africa
By Peroshni Govender
JOHANNESBURG, June 14 (Reuters) – South Africa wants Western
nations to lift economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe and is
pressing Harare’s power-sharing government to speed up reforms
needed to bring about elections in the troubled country.
Zimbabwe has been plunged into poverty due to what analysts
have said is economic mismanagement by entrenched President
Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party, hit with sanctions for
suspected human rights abuses and vote rigging.
“It’s not just Zimbabwe that’s saying the sanctions are not
working. The entire continent is saying that,” Lindiwe Zulu,
South African President Jacob Zuma’s top foreign policy advisor
told Reuters on Thursday
Analysts say the sanctions have been exploited by Mugabe
for his political purposes, blaming them for his party’s
economic blunders that have caused what once was one of Africa’s
richest nations to now be among its poorest.
Zulu is part of a Southern African Development Community
initiative led by Zuma aimed at ending the political turmoil in
Zimbabwe and holding free and fair elections by next year.
Mugabe, 88, has ruled the country since its independence
from Britain in 1980. He was forced into a power-sharing deal
with rival and now Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of
the Movement for Democratic Change, after a disputed 2008 poll
marred by ZANU-PF violence and intimidation.
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