The Commonwealth will be sending a team to Zimbabwe this weekend to assess whether the country should be readmitted into the international body.
Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth, a club made up of mainly former British colonies, voluntarily in 2003 after it had been suspended over human rights abuses by the government, under Robert Mugabe at the time.
Mugabe was overthrown in a coup in 2018 and succeeded by long-time ally-turned-rival Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The country first applied for readmission in 2018 after Mugabe had left office, and this will be the third visit by the Commonwealth to determine whether Zimbabwe should be allowed to rejoin.
Despite attempts by the Mnangagwa regime to distance itself from the worst excesses from Mugabe’s time in power, political intimidation and persecution of opposition political figures is still commonplace. In the last general election, held in 2018, there were widespread claims of rigging and incidents of violence by supporters of the government against opposition supporters.
[Image: Teenesh Walter from Pixabay]