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It was refreshing to hear Econet Wireless, Zimbabwe’s top performing blue chip company with interests throughout Africa as well is in Europe and the United States, confess that sanctions had poisoned the operating environment and hamstrung its operations over the years.
The National Association of Non Governmental Organisation (Nango) has also come out of the woodwork announcing a willingness to work with Government to have the sanctions lifted saying its membership was reeling from the effects of the sanctions.
As we report elsewhere in this issue, the majority of NGOs operating in Zimbabwe are downsizing in the wake of funding cuts from their western donors.
We welcome the pronouncements from these two organisations which go a long way in trashing Western rhetoric that the sanctions are smart or targeted when they are filthy and indiscriminate.
It is important to note that Econet is basically a global conglomerate, whose operations in other parts of the world would naturally shield it from the effects of the sanctions. Now consider the impact of sanctions on smaller companies operating in Zimbabwe per se and on the generality of the people who know no other country but Zimbabwe, and the picture gets really dire.
While we applaud Econet and Nango’s Damascene Moment, we can’t help but wonder if these organisations began feeling the effects of the sanctions this year when the embargo has been with us since the turn of the millennium?
Econet and Nango’s case, however, mirrors the hypocrisy that characterised some sections of Zimbabwean society which, despite bearing the brunt of the sanctions, behaved like the proverbial three monkeys that heard, saw and spoke no evil in the mistaken belief that doing so would abet the Zanu-PF cause while hurting the cause of the MDCs.
This infantile denial was made despite the fact that the sanctions-imposing countries, every year, announced the extension of their sanctions.
To this day, some among us continue lying with a straight face that there are no sanctions on Zimbabwe even though the now defunct GPA, to which their party was a signatory, acknowledged the existence of sanctions that are estimated to have cost our economy over US$42billion in revenue over the past 13 years.
We thus call on all those who chose a conspiracy of silence over the years, to follow Econet and Nango’s example. The Western embargo serves no other purpose than holding back our national development.
Sanctions have failed to separate Zimbabweans from President Mugabe and Zanu-PF as was dreamt by the then US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester Crocker; neither have the sanctions led to the stoning of the Zanu-PF leadership in the streets as was the wish of the British foreign secretary Robin Cook.
In fact, the results of the harmonised elections held this year, which were a virtual referendum on sanctions and Western meddling, attest to this truism.
Those they were supposed to abet have similarly failed, and it is time to think constructive engagement.
Zimbabwe has no quarrel with anyone. It just wants to be left alone to chart its destiny as a sovereign member of the community of nations.
Through it all, we Zimbabweans should speak with one voice which is why Econet and Nango’s belated confession is welcome.
We take this opportunity to remind Britain, the US and their Western allies that land ownership will never revert to the skewed colonial tenure. The programme is a fait accompli. It does not fit the stereotype of invasions and farm occupations that Western media fed the world as it has legal and institutional frameworks guaranteeing its permanency.
The only option left for the Westerners, apart from permanent estrangement with Zimbabwe, is dialogue. It is time to drop the charade and engage the Government in the same spirit that sees the Western nations exchange diplomatic envoys with Zimbabwe.
Online Reporter