THE Zimbabwean government has hired a fourth lobby and
public relations (PR) firm in a desperate bid to spruce up its battered
international image and bolster the diplomatic re-engagement drive that has
fallen off the rails amid a growing backlash over the deteriorating human
rights situation in the country, the Zimbabwe Independent can report.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration has engaged
London-based BTP Advisers—which joins United States-based Mercury International
Limited, Ballard Partners and Avenue Strategies—in a quest to help Zimbabwe
return to the community of nations after decades of isolation.
The company has also been tasked with communicating to
stakeholders about the circumstances under which Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors’
Association leader Peter Magombeyi was allegedly abducted.
In a briefing by BTP Advisers to world media at the
instigation of Foreign Affairs minister Sibusiso Moyo on behalf of government
last week, Harare blamed local media houses and other pressure groups for peddling
falsehoods on Magombeyi’s alleged abduction.
A press release issued by BTP following the engagement
distanced government from Magombeyi’s abduction, which the firm said had
frustrated the re-engagement programme.
“These incidents do nothing to assist, and only seek to
obstruct the government’s genuine and open-minded efforts to engage with the
international community on behalf of the Zimbabwean people,” the firm said in a
statement dated September 20.
“Given this fact, the government expresses its frustration
at the ongoing, instant reaction by those in the international media alluding
to government involvement in these disappearances. We ask the media to spend
less time insinuating and more time investigating how and who may benefit and
be behind them.
“The government calls for all parties to come to the table
and discuss this dispute in the spirit of openness and mutual respect. The
government is concerned that the timings of a spate of disappearances—followed
by reappearances—of civil society and labour activists on the eve of major
international meetings of crucial importance to the whole country are forming a
pattern.”
BTP, a public relations firm whose senior management has
close links to the Liberal Democrats, has in the past worked with Rwandan
President Paul Kagame and successfully led a campaign to exonerate Kagame from
the 1994 genocide.
A 2009 report from the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative
acknowledged that the BTP’s “excellent public relations machinery” had
succeeded in hiding “the exclusionary and repressive nature of the regime” in
Kigali.
BTP advised Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta during his
dispute with opposition leader Raila Odinga after the 2014 elections.
The company also ran Kenyatta’s PR campaign when he was
facing charges from the International Criminal Court for crimes against
humanity. He was charged for his role in the violence that erupted during the
2007 Kenyan elections, where more than 1 200 people were killed while 300 000
were displaced.
In February, Zimbabwe spent US$500 000 on US-based lobby
firm Ballard to canvass for the removal of targeted sanctions imposed on the
southern African country. Brian Ballard, a senior partner in the firm, was part
of President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign and is part of the Trump
re-election bid.
Ballard has a large African clientele that includes Moise
Katumbi, the opposition leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who feared
being jailed by former President Joseph Kabila and went into exile in 2016.
In June, government engaged Avenue Strategies Global LLC,
at a fee of US$1 million, to lobby the US government to drop sanctions against
the southern African nation.
Government also recently engaged US firm Mercury
International Limited in a contract which will run until May 31, 2020. Moyo is
cited in the contract form which is undersigned by Counsel Leonardo Dosoretz.
Zimbabwe has been desperate to straighten a chequered human
rights record since the August 1, 2018 shootings which claimed the lives of six
civilians. Zimbabwe Independent
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