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Gibson Nyikadzino Correspondent
Economic sanctions everywhere are considered an act of war, for their intent is to accomplish many of the same things as actual attacks, that is death and destabilisation.
Since 2001, the extension of the impact of sanctions also caused the scarcity of essential items such as food, medicine, medical equipment and hygiene products needed in Zimbabwe’s hospitals.
The knock-on effects of sanctions, leading to the scarcity of medical necessities, negatively impacted the right of ordinary citizens to access functional health facilities.
Against Zimbabwe, sanctions were also crafted to create civil unrest and political instability, with the ultimate goal being an uprising and effect regime change.
In this regard, Zimbabwe is technically-involved in a non-military war, yet a sophisticated one that big powers use to inflict and kill the morale of, especially small nations, by blocking lines of economic viability, hence making the opportunities of wealth creation unavailable.
Without doubt, all wars are started as a means of forcing one or more countries to accept the will of one or more other countries.
Economic sanctions attempt to achieve the same objective, but without committing the military, but the outcomes likely the same.
‘Beautiful’ names, ugly contents
The legislative names of the unjustified economic sanctions against Zimbabwe appear to make a good reading considering the way they are crafted, but the contents are inhumane.
The turn of the millennium has seen the use of sanctions replacing military confrontation among states. Economic sanctions, draconian as they are, have long considered a non-violent deterrent, have ironically become a tool of modern warfare.
When reading and interpreting the economic sanctions against Zimbabwe, it is also possible to translate them as a declaration of war.
This war against Zimbabwe is captured in three formats, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA) of 2001; the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) of 2000 and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a department of the US Treasury that administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on the country’s foreign policy.
Do not be misled by the seemingly “good” names of the ZIDERA and AGOA acts, they have condemnable elements.
In ZIDERA, the US government disapproves of the executive directors of the international financial institutions to extend loans and debt cancellation to Zimbabwe.
This is because the US beholds Zimbabwe for blocking its interests by intervening in the DRC war under the mandate of SADC.
The sanctions also emphasise the enforcement of the SADC tribunal rulings issued between 2007 and 2010.
The region later acknowledged its constitution and mechanism of conflict resolution were setting a bad precedence for other countries and that it was not in tandem with the region’s strategic goals.
More so, there is a belief in the US political system that when Zimbabwe embarked on the land redistribution exercise, it disturbed the status quo that fed the interests of the Caucasian world in terms of land ownership and resources management.
What made Zimbabwe to be at the receiving end of these punitive sanctions is because of the land reform of 2000.
By nature, US foreign policy objectives have historically been achieved through militarism and brutal force, hence the ugliness of the situations that have been seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen.
But in changing course, it is now using sanctions as measures to achieve similarly the same.
Geo-economic manipulation
Geo-economics is the use of monetary instruments to promote and defend interests with a goal to produce beneficial geopolitical results and have an effect on other nation’s fiscal actions to position your country geopolitically.
The sanctions against Zimbabwe do not have economic implications, but politically motivated under ZIDERA.
The AGOA piece of legislation that was enacted a year before ZIDERA has some economic disadvantages for Zimbabwe.
Of Africa’s Sub-Saharan countries, AGOA makes Zimbabwe and Sudan the only ineligible countries to have access to American markets.
Because trade, investments and commerce have become the key drivers of state relationships in the world, the US through AGOA denies Zimbabwe opportunities of growth.
Because AGOA is not a multilateral trade act, but bilateral, it gives the US the power to manipulate Africa.
It also side lines the existing solidarity Africa has because AGOA is a preferential trade agreement.
By targeting Zimbabwe, the US wants to achieve superiority over Africa by inflaming inter-state rivalries and therefore remain dominant.
Determined to choke Zimbabwe
In 2016 and 2019, two Zimbabwean banks were fined by the US department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for what America said was the “facilitation of banned transactions”.
Then Barclays Bank was fined US$2,48 million in 2016, while in 2019 Standard Chartered was fined US$18 million “for violations of sanctions regulations”.
In August this year, a local mining firm had a US$10 million payment blocked by OFAC because Zimbabwe is designated a “hostile destination”.
When a sanctioned country is fighting a war, it seeks third-party means to ensure its citizens remain afloat in terms of survival.
On many occasions, the US has shown that its intention to sanction Zimbabwe has nothing to do with helping the people of this country, but rather suffocate the population.
The West occasionally says sanctions against Zimbabwe were primarily targeted on senior public office bearers, but the ripple effects have results in ordinary people on the street being affected and ultimately suffering.
Some may ask, how do sanctions translate to the suffering of ordinary citizens?
Most countries tend to shy away from sanctioned countries, even investors and tourists.
Therefore, any meaningful association with such countries is zero to none. Companies that have tried to trade and invest in Zimbabwe have risked being blacklisted by the West, hence this further perpetuates misery and poverty.
Some wars must end
ZIDERA, AGOA and OFAC are the three key impediments to Zimbabwe’s quest for economic transformation as the triad laws want to isolate Zimbabwe from the rest of the world.
But the obtaining situation on how Zimbabwe has managed to withstand the pressures of the West for over two decades now show that some wars need to come to an end.
The internationalisation of a bilateral issue that it gains traction to become an economic war is neither safe nor a good gesture.
All wars end up on the negotiating table.
As the Second Republic is on a mission to re-engage with the West, gestures of warmly political interactions should not be misconstrued for willing subservience.
Sanctions ought to be lifted in totality and unconditionally.
Zimbabwe remains the land of the revolution that ushered the people’s victory and, guided by liberation ethos, seeks to commit to a path of engagement and re-engagement.
Zimbabweans, remember we are one!
Online Reporter