HARARE, April 17 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has deregistered all non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and told them to submit new applications to try to weed out groups it says are trying to oust President Robert Mugabe, state radio said on Tuesday.
Mugabe, sole ruler since independence in 1980, has accused NGOs and aid groups of supporting the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and imposed tight restrictions on food aid distribution in the country.
Minister of Information and Publicity Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said Harare was targeting NGOs because some were using relief activities as a cover for a MDC-led campaign to overthrow the government, state radio reported.
"Pro-opposition and Western organisations masquerading as relief agencies continue to mushroom, and the government has annulled the registration of all NGOs in order to screen out agents of imperialism from organisations working to uplift the wellbeing of the poor," Ndlovu was quoted as saying.
Government officials were not immediately available for comment.
But aid groups in the country, which is struggling with a deepening economic crisis marked by soaring inflation, poverty and chronic food and fuel shortages, expressed concern.
They said the government's move could stop food aid from reaching Zimbabwe, which has signalled it expects a huge shortfall of maize this year due to drought. Maize is the nation's key staple.
There are also concerns that programs that combat the southern African nation's HIV/AIDS epidemic, considered one of the worst on the continent, could be impeded by the government's deregistration campaign.
"We cannot underestimate the role played by NGOs and if that (deregistration) is true we are really concerned," Bob Muchabayiwa, programme director at the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), told Reuters.
"We are trying to engage the government to hear whether this is a policy position because this could cause panic in the sector," Muchabayiwa said, adding that NANGO had more than 1,000 members.
The targeting of the NGOs came just days after Zimbabwe's government cancelled an agreement with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide help to reform parliament.
Its cancellation followed a U.S. government claim that it was working with some parliamentary committees to discredit Mugabe's government. The admission, just weeks after a violent police crackdown on anti-Mugabe activists, infuriated Harare.
Mugabe, widely accused of running Zimbabwe's once-prosperous economy into the ground through policies such as the seizure of white-owned farms, blames the economic problems on sabotage by Western powers who are keen to topple him.
Britain, the United States and other Western nations deny that they have waged economic war against Mugabe and insist that they are merely trying to restore democracy in Zimbabwe.
