Story by Oleen Ndori, Foreign Desk Editor
ZIMBABWE and Botswana have reaffirmed commitment towards enhancing economic ties in a number of sectors including mining and agriculture.
This came out when Botswana’s Minister of International Relations, Honourable Phenyo Butale paid a courtesy call on Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister, Professor Amon Murwira on the side-lines of the ordinary session of the SADC Council of Ministers.
Briefing journalists, Honourable Butale, reaffirmed Harare-Gaborone relations and plans to deepen them.
“We are here, first of all, to attend the SADC Council of Ministers, which is an important meeting that looks at the budget of SADC that looks at the running of SADC and the various day-to-day issues at SADC. But, as you know, Botswana and Zimbabwe continue to enjoy excellent relations and, as the new government in Botswana, we needed to meet with the government of Zimbabwe to first of all say, we still hold relations with Zimbabwe in high regard,” Honourable Butale said.
“We still want to entrench, we want to reconfigure, to reinvigorate the already excellent relations between our two nations. The meeting went very well because the two of us are in agreement that there is a lot that we can do together in the area where we agree on, which is that both of our countries want to embark on rapid industrialisation, so we want to work together in terms of trade between the two countries.
“We already have a very strong foundation, which is people-to-people diplomacy. Our people are very close, and, therefore, they move towards business-to-business diplomacy and ensure that we trade more with each other, we collaborate more with each other. So we come out of the meeting much more energised and happy that, indeed, the relations between Botswana and Zimbabwe, which are already excellent, will be entrenched, will be much more beneficial for both countries.”
