Staff Reporter
Government is set to institute a thorough investigation into the unholy alliance between Britain and local teachers’ unions to determine the latter’s level of interference in the domestic affairs of Zimbabwe.
The intended investigation follows the disclosure last week in the House of Lords by a Junior Minister of Her Majesty’s Government in charge of Foreign ,Commonwealth and Development Office, Tariq Mahmood, that the UK’s government has been clandestinely meeting in Harare with various trade unions to discuss the issue of salaries and impact of the Covid 19 pandemic.
Addressing the nation yesterday, President Mnangagwa said Britain’s interference in domestic affairs of Zimbabwe was grossly unwarranted in terms of tenets of international law and practice.
“Only last week, our country Zimbabwe became a subject of unmerited focus and debate in the British House of Lords. This British extra-territorial concern by a foreign legislature on a sovereign African State, which is a full and equal member of the United Nations, is grossly unwarranted in terms of tenets of international law and practice,” said President Mnangagwa.
The President said that the disclosure in the House of Lords that Britain was meeting with Zimbabwe’s trade unions and teachers’ unions, was confirmation of very gross, unwarranted and blatant interference in the domestic affairs of Zimbabwe by the British Government, contrary to rules and precepts of the Geneva Conventions which regulate state relations.
The President reiterated that Zimbabwe was a sovereign state and that Britain had no role to play in the domestic affairs of the country.
“Zimbabwe is a sovereign state, has been since its independence from colonial rule in 1980, which is not even affiliated to the Commonwealth, a body it voluntarily quit over differences related to her just Land Reform Programme. Equally, civic groups and teachers employed by the Zimbabwe Government to work in Zimbabwe are not employees of the British government, whether by contract or remuneration. Their activities, singly or in combination, have nothing to do with the British government or any foreign government for that matter,” said the President.
President Mnangagwa added that because of the brazen, self-confessed violation of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty and threat to national security and stability by the British government, the Zimbabwe Government will institute full and thorough investigations to unearth the level of British’s interference in the domestic affairs of the country.
