Zanu-PF targets UK for visa ban

Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party warned yesterday that it was considering a tit-for-tat ban on senior British Ministers and officials visiting the African country after a disabled Zimbabwean politician was refused entry at Gatwick airport.

Joshua Malinga, Deputy-Secretary for the Disabled and Disadvantaged in the party, was stopped at Gatwick on Friday under a European Union travel ban preventing members of Zimbabwe's ruling elite from entering member countries.

Malinga left Britain last night on an Air Zimbabwe flight from Gatwick to Harare. British officials said that he was not formally deported but was 'removed'.

'This is the clearest example that the Brits have gone bananas and are harassing disabled people who should be assisted,' Zimbabwe's Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, said in the Herald newspaper in the Zimbabwean capital.

'Perhaps the time has come for our own list of Britons who are not welcome to Zimbabwe,' he said.

The Foreign Office said Malinga was stopped because he is on a list of represent- atives of Robert Mugabe's government barred from entering the EU. Last week, the EU extended sanctions on the Zimbabwean leadership to include an extra 52 people, among them the First Lady, Grace Mugabe.

Malinga, who uses a wheelchair, was stopped while attempting to clear immigration at Gatwick as he made his way to Heathrow for a flight to New York.

Malinga said he had not realised he was included in the ban. He said his role was within Zanu PF's policy-making politburo and was not a government position. 'I'm travelling to New York because I am a leader of disabled peoples. I don't see what that has to do with the Zimbabwe government.'