President Mugabe was attending the ceremony in his capacity as African Union chairperson and responded to the applause by clasping his hands as a show of unity. While other leaders were welcomed by government officials, President Mugabe, who is also Sadc chairperson was welcomed by President Al-Bashir at the Khartoum International Airport on Monday, Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to Sudan, Ms Hilda Mufudze, confirmed.
The siatuation was very different in Nigeria when Mugabe was told to go by Sahara Reporters. Presidential spokesperson Mr George Charamba yesterday described the journalists as the gang did not deserve the tag “media outfit.”
“This is not a media outfit; these are activists with cameras and it is actually a misnomer for anyone to refer to them as journalists because they are not that,” said Mr Charamba.
“In a way you could see that Nigeria is a guinea pig for the trial of that kind of confrontational activism, which is used to abuse African heads (of State). As it turns out, they had targeted President Mugabe as well as President Zuma.”
Mr Charamba said the organisation had, unbeknown to the Nigerian authorities, a pre-arranged motive to humiliate the two leaders and took advantage of protocol lapses at the venue of the inauguration.
“That was the first loophole. The second loophole was a protocol requirement that all Heads travel on a bus, so essentially it meant that, that protocol expectation by the host country stripped Heads (of State) of their normal structures of protection and interaction including with players like the so-called Sahara TV,” said Mr Charamba.
He, however, said the trend that Nigerian activists allowed themselves to be used against President Mugabe and Zimbabwe was not a new phenomenon.
“Let it not be forgotten that in 2008 in the run-up to our elections, we had a publication called ‘This Day’, which is Nigerian starting a project in South Africa. They launched a similar paper in South Africa, which they termed ‘Southern African Version’ and from day one to its last day, it concentrated its editorial attacks on President Mugabe and Zanu-PF,” said Mr Charamba.
“Curiously, after the elections ‘This Day’ folded up and it was clear to us that this was a project which had been set up specifically against President Mugabe and Zanu-PF and the Zimbabwean electoral process.”
Mr Charamba said the so-called Sahara TV was no different from the mentioned projects, noting that the, “protocol arrangement around the Heads (of State) severely weakened us and in future, we will be a lot wiser.” NEWS
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