‘Sanctions on Zimbabwe a war on humanity’

The organisations marched to the United States and European Embassies on Friday to hand over their memorandum of demands.

In 2002, the US imposed financial and travel restrictions on 85 individuals in the country, including President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The sanctions were imposed on the country when the late Robert Mugabe was still president.

The restrictions also apply to state-owned companies, private business and organisations.

The coalition's Martha Shumba, who works as a domestic worker in South Africa, says the sanctions mostly impacts ordinary citizens.

"That is wrong it is targeted on us, individuals, because if a political leader can die in Singapore and can on a mansion with a lake behind it – it simply means these sanctions are targeted at me who is working as a maid sometimes earning R800 to R1500 a month.”

Shumba questions why the US would build one of the biggest embassies on the continent in Zimbabwe if it doesn’t care about the country.

"Right now, what we are saying to the USA, Britain and the EU is that we are not fighting, but your sanctions are war. We are not begging, we are saying remove the sanctions."

Spokesperson for Zanu-PF in South Africa, Kennedy Mandaza, urged the EU and US to remove the sanctions as he believes they were illegally instituted.

"Firstly, they were unjustified, they are illegal, they violated the fundamental rights of the people of the region and specifically the people of Zimbabwe.”

Speaking outside the EU, the ANC's acting spokesperson Dakota Legoete said the sanctions have led to instability in the region with millions of the citizen displaced.

"And it is undermining efforts to stabilise the region and the continent. It is also undermining the economic growth of Zimbabwe. And these particular sanctions when they started it was against Mugabe and Mugabe is no more."

He adds the EU cannot continue to push millions of Zimbabweans and has urged the union to lift the "unjust" sanctions.