adminUNITED States President Barrack Obama courted the ire of self-respecting Zimbabweans during his recent visit to South Africa when he claimed that “bad governance” had led to the prevailing economic challenges in Zimbabwe, not the crippling illegal sanctions his country and the European Union have maintained on the country since 2001.
“If you look at Zimbabwe, it used to be one of the wealthiest countries on the continent but bad governance has led to an economic disaster. There is an opportunity now to move to a new phase where perhaps Zimbabwe can finally achieve all its promise.
“But that requires free and fair elections and it requires those currently in power in Zimbabwe to recognise that the interest of all people have to be served,” Mr Obama said.
There is no doubt he knows very well that the cause of the problems facing Zimbabwe are the illegal economic sanctions, for if America knew that the punitive action was of no force, they would not have imposed the sanctions in the first place. However, he wants us to believe that the economic hardships afflicting Zimbabwe are because of President Mugabe and his government.
Mr Obama is not the first, and will certainly not be the last high-profile US figure to show brazenness by demonising Zimbabwe and showing unspeakable nerve to spite a victim of their own machinations. In November 2005, their former ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Christopher Dell, charged that it was neither drought nor sanctions which were at the root of Zimbabwe’s decline but “gross mismanagement” of the economy by the Government led by President Mugabe.
But we must tell the Americans boldly that they have no right to preach good governance to us. It is not President Mugabe responsible for the decline of the country’s economy but the illegal western economic sanctions which were wrought through the draconian Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act which was passed into law by the US Congress in December 2001. They have renamed the law Zimbabwe Transition to Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2010. This is a tougher piece of legislation that keeps the 2001 measures firmly in place but also provide for more intrusive US mechanisms that legalise greater American funding to anti-Zimbabwe and anti-Zanu-PF civic and political organisations.
The illegal sanctions are aimed at punishing President Mugabe and Zimbabweans for pursuing popular sovereign policies like the land reform programme which former US Secretary of State, Collin Powell claimed rendered millions of Zimbabweans desperately hungry.
The illegal embargo has indeed caused the hardships which Zimbabweans are going through. Studies, some done by the European Union, which also imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, confirm this. In its 2013 election manifesto, Zanu-PF puts into perspective the commercial cost of the illegal embargo, not to mention the social impact which includes the intense human suffering and even death they have caused on poor Zimbabweans. The party says the economy has lost up to $42 billion as a result of the illegal sanctions.
In the manifesto, “Taking back the Economy: Indigenise, Empower, Develop and Create Employment,” launched in Harare recently, Zanu-PF equated the illegal sanctions to a declaration of war.
“Apart from the debt burden, which threatens the goals of the people, there is also the very serious threat from the sanctions burden in terms of what they have cost the country in monetary terms.
“The illegal sanctions imposed by the West have been equivalent to a declaration of war on Zimbabwe’s sovereignty.
“Since 2001, the illegal sanctions have put the Zimbabwe economy under siege with negative downstream effects on vulnerable groups, communities and civil society.
“These sanctions manifested themselves as financial, trade, cultural, academic, sport embargoes, diplomatic isolation travel bans, freezing of financial accounts of the national leadership, influential individuals in the business community and strategic entities and generally worsening Zimbabwe’s sovereign risk,” the manifesto reads.
Zimbabwe, Zanu-PF says, lost donor support amounting to approximately $36 million annually since 2001, $79 million in loans from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and African Development Bank, commercial loans of $431 million and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reduction of $3,4 billion.
“The negative publicity created an artificially induced negative national image which attracted high-risk premium on alternative sources of offshore lines of credit and killed the tourism market. It also scared away potential creditors and reduced commercial loans by $431 million per annum during the 2000s.
“Furthermore, interruption of trade and constraints on manufacturing and general economic activities saw GDP almost halving from $7,49 billion in 2000 to $4 billion in 2010,” according to the party manifesto.
This is enormous prejudice on an economy as small as Zimbabwe’s but thankfully, the Government has managed to maintain a functioning country.
Mr Obama should also be reminded that Zimbabwe is a sovereign state which should be respected by all, and that within its sovereignty, its people should decide who their leader must be. Colonialism has gone forever and US had no right to dictate what Zimbabweans should do or how they should run their affairs.
Zimbabwe has and will never involve itself in America’s internal affairs or stray into its backyard, so President Obama should be again reminded that he has no business in meddling with the country’s political affairs.
It is apparent that Mr Obama assumes that he represents a “big” country. Therefore, in his mind, he has the right to dictate everything to us, even the right to play the hypocritical game.
But we know that Mr Obama and his Western allies who are castigating the Government are a bunch of hypocrites. They like to talk of good governance, human rights and rule of law as having been established in Europe, yet they do not even practise them any more, particularly in the developing world where their national interests are top priority. We know some blatant dictatorships they associate with in Africa and the Middle East, with no criticism of their bad governance.
They are friends with the dictatorships because they use them as instruments for their imperial interests. If the US was really interested in democracy and human rights, they, for example, would not be the not-so-covert force behind the coups we have seen in Libya, Tunisia, Iraq and the ongoing chaos in Egypt.
The British and the Americans took offence when President Mugabe embarked on the land reform programme. Land redistribution was the prime reason why both late and living gallant sons and daughters of Zimbabwe fought in the liberation struggles from 1893 right up to the Third Chimurenga in 2000. Therefore, the issue of land had to be attended to in a way that satisfied us blacks who were dispossessed during colonialism.
To us black Zimbabweans, the issue of land is not about the simple commercial value that whites attach to it; it is about its profound social utility and identity. It is about who we are; it defines us and our connection to our forebears; it gives us our very humanity. Indeed it gives us crops; we graze our livestock on it; we dig it for minerals and so on. This means that land has a commercial value as well but we don’t define it in terms of dollars and cents, but have a deeper understanding of its importance to us.
Online Reporter