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Ambassador Bruce Wharton of the United States of America is leaving Zimbabwe after serving in the country for seven years starting as a junior officer. He told reporters yesterday after bidding farewell to Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko that relations been Harare and Washington had improved during his tenure and that the US had helped Zimbabweans through humanitarian assistance.
All fair and fine. He implored both countries to engage to take their relations to a higher level. But he refused to commit his country to the removal of the illegal economic sanctions it imposed on Zimbabwe in 2001. Wharton, instead, chose to place the onus for the removal of the economic embargo on the victim of the wickedly misnamed Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, Zimbabwe itself.
“I cannot predict what Zimbabwe will do,” said Ambassador Wharton when asked when he thought the US would remove its sanctions regime as a way of improving relations between the two countries.
“The magic is Zimbabwe focuses on the concerns that gave rise to Zidera.”
The least we can say is that we find Mr Wharton’s valedictory remarks ill-advised if not completely in bad taste. We say this advisedly given that Ambassador Wharton in particular and the US in general know the real reason for the imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe, but they have over the years opted to obfuscate and muddy issues.
The sanctions were imposed at the behest of the British government under the New Labour party of Tony Blair. Blair lied about the situation in Zimbabwe the same way he has recently confessed to Britain’s and America’s distortion and manipulation of information leading to the invasion of the state of Iraq after they falsely claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready for deployment in 45 minutes.
After Zimbabwe embarked on the historic land reclamation programme led by President Mugabe in 2000, Britain decided to punish the country in defence of its minority kith and kin against the aspirations of the majority blacks, but it could not do this alone. That is how the US and the European Union and its former colonies of Australia and Canada were roped in.
Instead of stating matters in their simplest terms, that Africans were reclaiming land stolen from their ancestors by our ancestors since the occupation of the country in the 1890s, Blair engaged in a malicious campaign of calumny, asserting that President Mugabe was guilty of human rights violations, political violence and murder so as to give some veneer of morality to what was a dastardly act of vindictiveness against a poor African state.
Ambassador Wharton is well aware of these basic facts. We would expect him to do at least something respectable before his departure: to tell his successor, one Harry Kay Thomas, this plain truth. But it seems he is still in a foul mood, angry on behalf of Britain and Blair about the land reform programme.
This exposes one thing: the US is not interested in improving relations with Zimbabwe except on its own terms. On that one we can assure him of utter failure. To the extent that Zidera was a spiteful piece of legislation to punish Zimbabwe for the land reform programme, it shall be resisted as such. There is no going back on that programme and that is one piece of good news which Wharton can take to the equally clueless Obama.
We find it patronising that at this late hour Mr Wharton has the temerity to tell us the US can only demonstrate that it is a friend of Zimbabweans by engaging in self-serving humanitarian donations while it maintains the bigger cruelty of sanctions on the whole nation. We find this insulting.
Zimbabweans are not interested in acts of charity. They want to be free to engage with whosoever they want in the international community. They want to freely exploit their natural resources and trade them freely without American interference. Zimbabwe is not interested in a war with any nation, but will not suffer bullying by a self-anointed global policemen.
The US can do better if it wants to improve relations with Zimbabwe. Mr Thomas can open a new chapter in those relations by telling Obama the true story: Zimbabwe wants to be as free of British control as the United States of America.
Online Reporter