daniel chigunwe
Gibson Nyikadzino Correspondent
In February 2002, the European Union (EU) imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe through what they called the Common Position 2002/145/CFSP. For two decades now, Zimbabwe’s economy has writhed under this strategy invoked to strangulate, asphyxiate and reverse the progressive land reform programme. The goal of using sanctions, besides effecting regime change in Zimbabwe, was to punish the bold African country.
There is no territory that has been sanctioned more in the history of economic warfare than Zimbabwe and the former settler regime of Rhodesia (1965-1979), such that the country has now been categorised as belonging to the “sanctions industry”.
Some theories have however been flown and thrown on how Rhodesia “fared better under United Nations sanctions” than Zimbabwe which is “only sanctioned by the Americans, Europeans and their allies”.
While the goals of the sanctions appear the same, the dynamics informing these decisions are different.
The import of this thesis, however, is to expose the unwillingness of anti-Zimbabwean propagandists who turn a blind eye to the realities that have existed before and now, on how Zimbabwe’s sanctions are more biting than Rhodesia’s.
The factors Rhodesia and Ian Smith survived the sanctions rarely apply to those in modern Zimbabwe.
A number of factors around this issue need to be understood in order to have sanity of thought when explaining this conundrum without malice and prejudice.
This therefore has to be argued, too, with the mind that the purpose of economic sanctions against the Smith government was not to bring it to its knees but to make him “reasonable” while Zimbabwe was supposed to “scream”.
Cheap vs Expensive Labour Determinant
Many people, while omitting facts, have given the Smith regime kudos for having a better performing economy under the strangulating UN sanctions. Ideally, the sanctions were to make Smith reasonable.
The Smith regime was repressive such that at its disposal was a cheap labour market that was used in factories, farms and industries to boost the economy.
Those that deal with the labour market are open to the idea that whenever there is cheap labour existence, production levels are increased.
Wealth and capital accumulation are products of the direct exploitation of labour by capital.
Through the use of the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1934, the Land Husbandry Act of 1951 and the Land Tenure Act of 1969 among others, the effect of sanctions was not felt by the Smith regime as it used blacks to uphold its racist ideology.
The need by Smith to uphold this racist ideology led to the development of authoritarian administrative systems that were closely woven, centralised and hierarchical.
On the contrary, sanctions imposed by the EU on Zimbabwe two decades ago came at a time the labour market was not run under any centralised and hierarchical system.
The sanctions came when the workers had attained their full rights from independence and also delving into political spheres with more agitation than before.
A result there was a labour migration that occurred as people left in droves leaving Zimbabwe’s industrial capacity and worthiness with dents that are still difficult to repair ever since the turn of the millennium.
While Smith’s repression strategies of the labour market provided statistics that spoke of “economic growth” for Rhodesia, people have overlooked that he was riding on a disempowered people.
While Smith had ‘economic growth’, in Zimbabwe, the government managed to economically empower more people than those Smith had ever ‘empowered’ leading to the rise of the small-to-medium-scale enterprises.
With what was at Smith’s disposal, even a toddler could have also turned around the Rhodesian economy effortlessly.
Kith and Kin advantage
Evidence of racism exists in this sanctions case. Colonialism was racist. While Rhodesia was under sanctions, because of Smith’s skin colour, he had more sympathy from British, American, European, South African, Australian and New Zealanders who vowed that the economy under his watch should prosper.
Foreign companies that knew it was illegal to do business with the Rhodesian government, continued to provide financial and investment support in what was termed “sanctions busting measures”.
Even so, Rhodesia enjoyed the support of the USA when Henry Kissinger was adviser for national security affairs and as secretary of state from 1969 to 1976 during which he had a major influence in supporting Rhodesia.
While the race card and the kith-and-kin advantage played well for Smith, Zimbabwe under the late President Robert Mugabe was treated using racist lenses.
Not only has it been on President Mugabe, but the New Dispensation also suffers the kith-kin factor simply because of race, those of Caucasian extraction have joined hands to annihilate Zimbabwe’s economic potential.
Independent states that helped the Smith government back then did not suffer the humiliation and threat of being sanctioned. Zimbabwe has suffered such.
Countries that have called on Zimbabwe to enjoy full rights like any other country were threatened with sanctions. Through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the USA can unilaterally stop financial investments in key economic sectors and punish those doing business with Zimbabwe.
This position has survived because of the racism that exists.
The racist and obdurate system run by the whites has been inconsistently applying the sanctions card. They want to benefit ‘theirs’ and subjugate the ‘other’ in protecting their kin.
US, Rogue States and Prolonged Conflicts
Had the USA stayed away from the bilateral affair between Harare and London over addressing the land issue, Zimbabwe and Britain would, by now, have mended their relations.
Through historical records, whenever the USA enters a conflict to ‘aid’ its ally, such conflicts have not ended as they became ideological.
The conflicts between the USA and Cuba, the US and Iran, the USA against Venezuela, the US versus China over Taiwan, the US and North Korea, and against Zimbabwe, they have morphed into ideological wars, which do not end until one ideology wins.
A closer look of these historical conflicts also shows that those engaged in ideological conflicts with the US have been labelled rogue states.
This was not the case with Rhodesia. It was not a rogue state but Zimbabwe has remained a rogue state in the eyes of the EU.
Britain imposed selective sanctions against Rhodesia and urged the world community to do likewise. Britain also refused to concede that the Rhodesian situation constituted “a threat to international peace and security”.
Against Zimbabwe, Britain and the EU wanted the situation in Zimbabwe during the land reform to be classified as “a threat to international peace and security”.
Countries termed rogue states are so because they pose a direct threat to American interests.
Rhodesia did not threaten US interests, but upheld them through the institution of class differences, as the US was during slavery.
Zimbabwe is regarded as having threatened US interest by taking the land and the only condition for the normalisation of relations between the two is to reverse the land reform, a condition that will never be taken in this life and in the after-life.
Zimbabwe will not sacrifice the land reform to betray millions who have benefited from it.
As long as the US is part and parcel of the equation of the EU’s common position, sanctions will remain there for generations to come.
Whose Rights Matter?
The Rhodesia-Zimbabwe sanctions issue carries a lot of worth when approached from the point of rationality. On several occasions, Zimbabwe has been accused of failing to uphold rights when the black majority took their land, yet when the Caucasians became citizens of Zimbabwe through colonisation, their brutality is a closed chapter.
What remains rational is to appreciate this matter from a point of why over twenty-five powerful European states and their allies want to punish Zimbabwe?
Does it mean the rights of Zimbabweans in land ownership do not matter to Europeans today as they did not matter back then.
Rhodesia sanctions were meant to bring a political solution, that is the independence of the black majority, and had nothing about wealth redistribution to benefit the exploited.
Zimbabwe’s sanctions are meant to stop an economic triumph over exploitation. Whose rights are the sanctions advocating for?
Zimbabweans, do not be deceived by the West. Remember we are one!
Online Reporter