By Staff Reporter
The Zimbabwe Vigil pressure group based in London has requested a meeting with the UK Home Office Secretary Theresa May to discuss the operations of Zanu PF in the country. This comes after Mugabe’s party opened another branch in Bracknell last week.
“Having been around for 12 years, the Vigil has a considerable database. We would like to check if any of these Zanu PF supporters at the Bracknell meeting have come to the Vigil. If they have misrepresented themselves as human rights activists to get our support for permission to stay in the UK we would like to expose them to the Home Office,” the ZimVigil said in a statement.
“Nehanda Radio displayed photos on its website taken at the launch of a new branch of Zanu PF in Bracknell, near London. The Vigil has put Nehanda Radio’s photos on our flickr website and we ask people to let us know if they can identify anybody in them by emailing [email protected],” the group said.
“The Vigil has already asked for a meeting with the Home Secretary, Theresa May, or her representative to discuss the asylum issue. We would be happy to expose bogus claims and see these frauds sent back home to enjoy the paradise that Zanu PF has created,” the Vigil added.
On Friday, Zanu PF UK chairman Nick Mangwana defended their operations saying “Zanu PF is not an illegal organisation. When we reached out to be given permission to operate, we provided the British Authorities with our personal home addresses. They don’t need some dingy online publication to publish our photos and banners for them to know where we are.
“We hold interfacing meetings with the relevant British Authorities who again are up to speed with our activities. There is no law to say a former asylum seeker cannot join Zanu PF. The whole point of elections periodically is to allow people to an opportunity to change their minds and or allegiance. If they were MDC last year, they can be Zanu PF this year. Or vice versa,” Mangwana said.
An immigration lawyer who spoke to Nehanda Radio however told us “an asylum status fraudulently acquired can be revoked by the British government even if that person has since been granted citizenship. When you are naturalized they even tell you the conditions under which citizenship can be revoked.”
Ephraim Tapa, one of the founders of the Vigil, told SW Radio Africa last week, ‘We have always known that there are regime agents among us. Until recently they have been working clandestinely, feeding the regime with information and also infiltrating organisations such as the ZimVigil to cause confusion and disunity.
“However, I find their audacity to launch branches across the UK surprising, given their leader Robert Mugabe’s terrible human rights record. This is disrespectful to victims of Mugabe’s brutality and it will cause anxiety as people realise that all along they had ZANU PF agents in their midst,” Tapa said.
MDC (Ncube) spokesman Nhlanhla Dube also told SW Radio Africa that it was well-known that ZANU PF officials sent their families abroad when conditions began to deteriorate in the country.
“After plundering and destroying all sectors, including education, they sent their children and families to western countries to protect them from the consequences of their bad governance. Some of these sought asylum when in fact their parents and families were the perpetrators of the violence.
“We find it ironical that these would choose to declare their allegiance to the regime in the comfort of western democracies.’ Dube said. He condemned ZANU PF officials for their double standards in calling for exiled Zimbabweans to return home when their own families are showing no inclination to do so.
Zanu PF UK launching branch in Bracknell
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