dyton mupawaenda
Gibson Nyikadzino-Herald Correspondent
It is not a coincidence for public intellectuals and ordinary citizens to understand why both Rhodesia and independent Zimbabwe have been victims of sanctions.
This is a debate that has not been pursued to understand why the two states, in their different epochs received sanctions as deterrents.
There must be something they did to rattle and infuriate the liberal global establishment and challenged the existing political economy.
The inclusion of the Rhodesian perspective here is not meant to sanitise and whitewash the Rhodesian colonial brutality, but to contextualise the scandalous nature of the neo-liberal agenda of the West in attempting to control the world.
The key fundamental idea is that both Rhodesia and Zimbabwe were sanctioned for resisting the International Law of Colonialism, also known as the Doctrine of Discovery.
This common-law international Doctrine was codified into European international law at the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 and in the Berlin Act of 1885 specifically to partition and colonise Africa.
To expand their explorations, colonialists used clauses of the law of colonialism emanating from the January 8, 1455 Papal Bulls that gave them power to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”
This made them appropriate unto themselves the right to occupy the native lands and having indigenous people trapped in perpetual slavery.
Using the same law, the colonial establishment occupied native and indigenous people in Africa, the Apache Indians in the US and the Aborigines in Australia.
Furthermore, the continued hold of native people’s lands by European colonial merchants implanted the idea that there was a “genocide” of white farmers that occurred in South Africa raised by conspiracy theorists that did not want the native South Africans to repossess their land in 2018.
Hence the displacement of the native people in Zimbabwe was legalised through the Doctrine or Discovery codified in the Berlin Act in 1890.
Therefore, indigenous peoples around the world have been negatively impacted by the international law of colonialism which has remained an applicable principle in many countries and also continues to limit the human, sovereign, commercial and property rights of African people’s and their Governments.
So, the Rhodesian and Zimbabwean governments had sanctions imposed on them because through the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) and Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) formally initiated by the Land Acquisition Act of 2002.
Both proclamations by the two governments indicate the need to resist the unjust laws of colonialism that gave rights to Europeans to own the land of the natives.
Rhodesia and Zimbabwe had both determinations for self-rule, sovereignty, political and economic independence.
Combined, the two have a 36-year association with economic sanctions, Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979 and Zimbabwe from 2001 to date.
There is no territory that has been sanctioned more in the history of economic warfare in Africa 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 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 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”.
Economically Zimbabwe has lost billions of dollars due to sanctions, and their impact must not be taken lightly, for they have disrupted many aspects of social life.
Other African countries fear taking the route that Zimbabwe adopted to empower their citizens and challenge the law of colonialism because they are afraid of living uncomfortable lives despite the economic enslavement that comes with the doctrine of discovery.
It is therefore key to understand that Zimbabwe’s realisation to have its native people be the rightful owners of their land and resisting the law of colonialism that empowered invaders to be in Zimbabwe is the reason why sanctions were imposed, and the white establishment feels happy to have the country’s economy “scream”.
The circumstances Zimbabwe resisted the law of colonialism are different from that of the Rhodesians.
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 as they were empowered by the Papal Bulls.
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.
The basis of the matter is that sanctions against Zimbabwe should be lifted, there is no need for comparisons.
Zimbabwe is targeted so that it does not send signals of resisting colonialism to other African countries.
Online Reporter