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PRC ship carrying arms for Zimbabwe leaves South Africa

A Chinese ship that was carrying arms for Zimbabwe hurriedly left Durban harbor in South Africa on Friday evening after a local court ordered that its cargo could not be transported overland across South Africa, reports said.

The An Yue Jiang lifted anchor after the Durban High Court ruled that its shipment of weapons and ammunition could be offloaded but could not be transported across South Africa to Zimbabwe, SAPA news agency reported.

It was not clear where the ship, which was carrying 70 tonnes of arms for the Zimbabwe Defense Forces, was headed. Zimbabwe has previously imported weapons through Beira port in Mozambique.

The court order was granted on an application brought by an Anglican bishop and an activist under the National Conventional Arms Control Act.

Dock workers had refused to offload the cargo, which included millions of bullets for AK-47 rifles, mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, on the grounds that to do so would be “grossly irresponsible.”

The ship had been anchored just outside the port since at least Monday, according to SAPA, which said it was owned by Cosco, a Chinese state firm.

An investigative magazine in South Africa, Noseweek, sounded the alarm over its cargo and its destination on Wednesday.

Opposition parties had pleaded with the government not to issue a conveyance permit for the shipment given the tensions in Zimbabwe caused by the three-week wait for presidential election results. The government said the permit had been issued as far back as Monday.

Since the EU placed Zimbabwe under an arms embargo in 2002, President Robert Mugabe has sourced much of his weapons in China, which he calls Zimbabwe’s “all-weather friend.”

Meanwhile, German Human Rights Commissioner Guenter Nooke said yesterday that China’s arms deliveries to Zimbabwe were “alarming in the extreme.”

Beijing was delivering arms to a regime that had effectively been voted out of office, Nooke said.

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