Robert Mugabe apparently has a friend in Greece.
According to comments made by the new Greek ambassador to Zimbabwe, Leonidas Contovounesios, Greece will push for the lifting of sanctions imposed by the European Union against Mugabe’s government when it assumes the EU presidency next year.
Mr Contovounesios made the comments in an interview after presenting his credentials to Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe in Harare.
“On the question of sanctions, which His Excellency the President brought up, we are working to eradicate them,” said Mr Contovounesios.”We aspire that they will be lifted during the upcoming Greek presidency which starts in January 2014.”
Sanctions were initially imposed on Zimbabwe over a decade ago by the EU, US and other allies, following Robert Mugabe’s sweeping land reforms which saw the confiscation of land from white farmers and its re-distribution among poorer black Zimbabweans. Mugabe, now 90, has been in power since 1980 and has been accused of presiding over ‘a reign of terror’, characterized by rampant corruption, economic mismanagement and political violence costing the lives of thousands of Zimbabweans.
However, pressure to end Robert Mugabe’s isolation has increased recently following the results of Zimbabwean elections in July 2013. In those elections Robert Mugabe’s party ZANU-PF won with 61% of the vote. While there were widespread reports of voter suppression and intimidation, the African Union called the elections free, honest and credible and many influential African voices including former South African President Thabo Mbeki have called on the West to recognize Mr Mugabe’s election as legitimate.
At the very least his re-election has cast new doubts on the effectiveness of sanctions at prising power from Mugabe, with some analysts maintaining that the West’s stance actually plays into his hands.
The African, Caribbean and Pacific Parliamentary Assembly (ACP) which is made up of 79 countries recently issued a call to the EU to end the sanctions which it said, “have caused untold human suffering as a result of company closures with attendant job losses.”
Europe itself appears divided on the issue. While some EU states seek to maintain a hardline against Mugabe – with the UK at the forefront – recently, largely in response to Belgian pressure, sanctions were lifted against the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation allowing the it to resume exports to EU states. The sanctions were initially imposed on the state-run corporation in 2008 for alleged involvement in acts contrary to to democracy in the southern African nation.
This decision, of course, seems to be motivated as much by Belgian self-interest than anything else. The ZMDC controls the huge diamond field of Maranga which is about the size of Berlin and thought to have huge undiscovered diamond deposits. Experts have estimated that in a few years Zimbabwe will account for 25% of worldwide diamond production, and Belgium is keen to ensure that the Zimbabwean diamonds will pass through the city of Antwerp – one of the largest diamond trading centers in the world.
With Leonidas Contovounesios’s statement, Greece has seemingly now planted its feet firmly in the ‘end the sanctions’ camp, although it remains to be seen how aggressively the country will actually pursue this diplomatic course during its EU presidency.
As to the reasoning behind the decision, according to Mr Contovounesios it was actually quite simple. “We are doing progress on that, we have to support our case. The Greek community (living in Zimbabwe) signed a petition to lift sanctions, so we cannot be against our own people,” the ambassador is reported to have said.