THE decision by the United Kingdom’s Home Office to reject a family’s plea to attend the funeral of their five-year-old grandchild, Andrea Gada, is a reminder of a country that is vindictive and is now suffering the backlash of their confused policy on Zimbabwe.
At the height of the Land Reform Programme, the British openly encouraged Zimbabweans to flee the country to reinforce the perception they were running away from President Mugabe’s alleged human rights abuses and readily offered them political asylum.
It was the case with Andrea Gada’s mother, Charity Gada.
Now, it is payback time.
The grandparents and aunt of Andrea Gada, the five-year-old girl of Downland Close, Eastbourne, in Sussex who was struck by a car on December 16 2014 and died the following day are just pawns in this senseless British game.
The reasons given by the Home Office for the refusal to grant the family members the visas to mourn their loved one might sound reasonable but they created the mess in the first place.
The Home Office claimed they could not grant the relatives visas because of ‘concerns’ about whether the family members had enough funds to support themselves and because officials were ‘not satisfied their intentions are genuine’.
It is as if the poor grand-parents from Chitungwiza masterminded the death of their grandchild to obtain visas to go to Britain!
In the circumstances, it was the sensible thing to do for the British to deny them visas given the dilemma they find themselves in and their resentment of President Mugabe and Zimbabwe.  
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)’s Democracy Day story this week, that listed President Mugabe ‘as one of the leaders refusing to leave power’ by one Maud Jullien gave credence to the madness and dishonesty of the British when it comes to dealing with Zimbabwe and President Mugabe.
Yet in reality, it was a terrible message sent not to Zimbabwe, but to the British themselves and their crass intolerance of humanity.
Zimbabweans overwhelmingly endorsed President Mugabe as their leader in the July 31 2013 harmonised elections.
As part of the BBC’s Democracy Day, Jullien ‘considers the African leaders who have ‘refused’ to give up power and those who have been forced out by popular protests’, so goes the ‘Democracy Day’ story.
“The principle of government by the people for the people has been subsumed by the will of some African leaders to cling to power,” the story goes further deep.
“Well-established examples of this tendency are Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Mbasogo Nguema.”
With that, the story of little Andrea had been forgotten.
This is despite reports that British Prime Minister Dave Cameron had ‘promised’ to investigate the case of a family whose relatives have been denied visas to attend the funeral of their daughter.
Local Liberal Democrat MP, Stephen Lloyd had raised the matter in the House of Commons last week.
Speaking during Prime Minister’s Questions, Lloyd said he would act as a guarantor to ensure the relatives returned to Zimbabwe.
“The Home Office decision is cruel and unkind. Prime Minister, will you intervene?” he said.
Lloyd, the MP for Eastbourne and Willingdon, said he would make sure the relatives returned soon after the funeral.
Cameron replied: “I will certainly look at the case – I was just discussing it with the Home Secretary — and make sure the Home Office has a careful look to see what can be done.”
Andrea’s parents, Wellington and Charity Gada, were born and bred in Zimbabwe and were said to have been granted asylum in the UK.
They duly castigated the inhuman decision by the Home Office saying it was making their grief over the loss of their daughter harder to bear.
“It’s a very difficult moment we’re going through and all this is just making it a double tragedy,” Wellington told the BBC News.
Indeed, the British will soon face the reality that they too have to also make the effort to take steps to mend relations fractured by Tony Blair’s delusional politics.
When the hysteria finally subsides, many British nationals will wonder why it took the whole British establishment to conduct such a wretched handling of a simple affair of granting visas to a family to come and mourn their departed one.
It is the confusion and the vindictive nature of their policy regarding Zimbabwe.
It is not based on reason, but on bitter emotions arising out of Zimbabwe’s historic Land Reform Programme.