Visa complications resulted in Zimbabwe’s First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa failing to attend a United Nations conference on women’s rights in New York this week.
Mnangagwa was supposed to attend the conference dubbed the 68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women which opened on March 11 in New York and ends on March 22. She was due to speak at a side event on March 18.
Due to problems related to traveling documents the First Lady resolved to send her daughter-in-law Leya Travis-Mnangagwa, married to Emmerson Junior, to read her speech instead. Leya is a director at the First Lady’s Angel of Hope Foundation.
Diplomatic sources close to ZimLive claimed that the foreign ministry submitted visa applications late for Zimbabwean delegates, including the First Lady and female provincial ministers.
“I understand there were visa complications with late submission of applications,” one western diplomat told ZimLive.
It is, however, reported that Women’s Affairs minister Monica Mutsvangwa, her permanent secretary Mavis Sibanda and senate president Mabel Chinomona managed to travel.
This comes a few weeks after four officials, Brenda Lee Pearson, Norma Kriger, Sarah Logan and Loretta Bass, from the United States’ development agency USAID were detained and kicked out of Zimbabwe, accused of spying.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said its members were “subject to aggressive handling, prolonged interrogation and intimidation, unsafe and forced nighttime transportation, overnight detention and confinement, and forced removal from the country.”
“The government of Zimbabwe has said it wants to pursue international re-engagement and democratic reforms. Its actions undermine those claims. We take the safety and security of U.S. citizens seriously and demand accountability from the government of Zimbabwe.”
The United States recently imposed sanctions on President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his wife under the Global Magnitsky Programme, accusing them of corruption and human rights abuses.
