South Africa Foils Tsvangirai’s Morocco Trip
The South African government on Thursday barred Zimbabwe’s opposition MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai from traveling to Morocco on an expired Emergency Travel Document (ETD), local media said.
This comes hard on the heels of his attack on the facilitator in Zimbabwe’s inter-party dialogue, former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who accused Tsvangirai of being insensitive to the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans by trying to derail efforts to for man inclusive Government in Zimbabwe, The Herald said on Saturday.
Tsvangirai used the ETD on his recent trips to France and Germany although it was not valid for these countries. He was issued with an ETD after his passport ran out of pages.
A South African Home Affairs spokeswoman told that country’s e-news channel that the MDC leader was barred from traveling to Morocco because he did not have the required documents.
The official said although Morocco could welcome Tsvangirai, it was not possible for her government to let the beleaguered MDC leader travel willy-nilly without the required papers. “Though he is wanted in Morocco, we can’t act on behalf of another government and that is why we can’t let him go using our borders,” said the official.
Tsvangirai wanted to fly to Morocco to receive a pro-democracy award awarded to him at a Moroccan political-economic forum in the Mediterranean.
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Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 5:14 pm under