By Idah Mhetu

PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa says his government will deregister civil society organisations which stray from their mandates to dabble in national politics.

He was addressing a Zanu PF politburo meeting at the party headquarters in Harare on Friday.

Mnangagwa also told western embassies accredited to the country to stop meddling in his country’s internal affairs.

The Zanu PF led government has not had the best of relations with both civil society and western embassies which have maintained close scrutiny on the excesses of the under-fire administration.

Meanwhile, President Mnangagwa has confirmed his government was considering a review of the country’s lockdown measures in light of the recent spike in confirmed Covid-19 cases.

“The recent rapid spike of infections requires that we make another review of the Covid-19 lockdown measures,” he said.

Zimbabwe’s cases rose to 926 with 12 related deaths as of Thursday night.

About two-thirds of the cases are imported.

Mnangagwa called on his Zanu PF party to continue raising awareness within communities in order to help curb the spread of the global pandemic.

“I urge the party to continue to be in the fore front of raising awareness levels in our communities of the dangers of this pandemic,” he said.

“On the health side, the strategies we adopted to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic have to date yielded positive results.

“Although there is a visible spike in the number of positive cases, largely due to returnees, we shall continue to strengthen our preventive measures as well as our testing, and contact tracing capacity.”