Politics of sanctions: Myths, realities

Political Agreement, and the deal reached between the decade long foes – Zanu-PF and MDC – was magnified as a milestone achievement and an historic occurrence for the people of Zimbabwe.
It is turning out that the deal is indeed historic, not exactly for any milestone achievements but for its outstanding failures in achieving its lofty goals, most outstanding of which were economic – regardless that no economic expert was ever consulted during the negotiations.
Not even the political goals have been significantly achie-ved.
The so-called GPA, whatever that means, is turning out to be no more than a little and dishonest substance that was introduced to the people with magnified fanfare.
MDC-T took so long to be convinced and made the negotiation process so much prolonged, not because they really had policy causes for the delays, but were just waiting for instructions from the West, itself battling to place its strategic interests in the whole development.
The long wait misled many into expecting to witness a very complicated strategic calculi and political dynamics behind what they thought was a big deal.
It only took less than a week and everyone came to the anti-climax of the sad reality that the MDC-T leadership took this GPA deal as no more than a Guaranteed Personal Accruement venture, a self enriching enterprise holding jobs in waiting for the boys and girls.
They wanted Johannes Tomana out of employment, Gideon Gono out, provincial governors out; so they could fill up these posts from their own ranks.
They even had the temerity to create posts outside the auspices of the Public Service Commission – the so-called “parallel government” in the Prime Minister’s office.
When MDC-T realised that Zanu-PF had no intentions whatsoever to relinquish the posts that Morgan Tsvangirai and his cohorts coveted, perhaps for the very same reasons MDC-T wanted the same posts; the outcry from the MDC-T leadership was quite loud and appealing.
The vehement desperate calls from the likes of Biti and Chamisa became comical to those who sympathise with Zanu-PF and quite inciting to those whose political sympathies are with MDC-T.
Demands from MDC-T were a reckless departure from the overrated GPA itself. They were a political creation meant to appease the hankering crowd in the MDC-T leadership.
Zanu-PF on their part wanted, and perhaps still wants the MDC-T to denounce the illegal economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the West and to publicly denounce the Western-hosted and sponsored pirate radio stations beaming propaganda hostilities into the country.
Nathaniel Manheru on Saturday March 19 wrote extensively about the role of the MDC-T in the illegal sanctions regime imposed by the West on Zimbabwe – a role no more than a largely insignificant call by Tsvangirai for sanctions that were coming whichever way, and the treacherous exercise of compiling a hit list of personalities and companies that the West uses as official cover for their wide-ranging sanctions that have devastated Zimbabwe’s economy in the past decade.
Asking for economic sanctions is quite different from causing them or being able to stop them. Of course the MDC-T did not cause economic sanctions on Zimbabwe and neither can they stop them. The only reason they support them is because they are imposed in their name – and if successful they could politically benefit the MDC-T purely on the basis of association, itself only acceptable to the West on its puppetry basis.
According to the authors of the illegal sanctions, all human rights abuses that may ever occur in Zimbabwe and those whose prominence may be purely based on fabrications and concoctions – all of such abuses must happen in the name of the MDC-T and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
That is precisely why the MDC-T was appending its name to almost every person who died in the run-up to the June 27 runoff presidential election – always making unsubstantiated claims that the causes for the deaths in question were a result of politically motivated brutalities.
Of course there were genuine cases of human rights abuses and even politically motivated deaths but in equal measure, there were fabrications about some such deaths.
Indeed, all human rights abuses in Zimbabwe must by definition be carried out in the name of Robert Mugabe; otherwise they are not worthy talking about. Every thug out there is Mugabe’s thug, so is every rapist, every thief, every corrupt person and every vandal.
So we have the deadly economic sanctions wrecking the economy of Zimbabwe in the name of stopping Mugabe’s criminals, and we have Zanu-PF vehemently calling for the unconditional lifting of these sanctions while the MDC-T claim that Morgan Tsvangirai was the first person to call for the lifting of the same sanctions, when they are not totally denying that the same sanctions do exist in the first place.
When assessing the deadly impact of the illegal economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the West beginning 2001, it is very important to distinguish between dependence on the West, much of which is inherited from the colonial era, and actual economic sabotage.
The dependence of Zimbabwe on the West is intrinsically dangerous. It provides the economic levers and the pressure points for destabilisation. This means that our colonial ties to Western economic hegemony will mean sanctions will hurt us all the more.
Economic sanctions by their very nature are a tool for political coercion. The success should be more a function of political costs than economic costs. This is precisely why the number of Zimbabweans starved to death by the sanctions regime does not matter in the least to the senders of sanctions.
The ultimate goal of economic sanctions is a political prize and this is why the United States and the rest of the West are very clear that their ultimate goal in Zimbabwe is to “see the back of Mugabe”. The political costs of sanctions are mainly a function of three factors:
Firstly they are a function of the issue at stake; in Zimbabwe’s case the conflict over the land reform programme which ousted the majority of colonially settled white commercial farmers, and also over the economic empowerment policies currently being pursued by the authorities.
Until the West is comfortably convinced that its economic hegemony in Zimbabwe is significantly restored the illegal sanctions regime is most likely to remain in place. These political costs are also a function of the type of sanctions employed.
In Zimbabwe the illegal sanctions regime has targetted individuals and their families and this is as far as the declared sanctions are concerned. The naive idea behind this move was of course to divide the leadership of Zanu-PF – all calculated on baseless assumptions that threatening individuals would result in the splitting of the entire party.
It appears the move backfired as the Zanu-PF leadership has actually used the sanctions list as a measure of cadreship; and, in fact some of the listed people have publicly bragged of the “privilege” to be on the books of such great powers like the United States and the EU, or more importantly of being on the same list with the revered Robert Mugabe.
Some of those who made surprise appearances on the list have actually ended up more prominent than they ever thought, and of course some have gone up the corporate ladder that way. There are also the declared sanctions against Zimbabwe’s top 40 companies including ZMDC, Zisco, ZB Bank and many others.
These sanctions have forced Zimbabwe to look for other partners to do business with and this means the exclusion of the West. The third function in terms of political costs depends on the regime types of the sender and target states.
We have had high political costs by way of sanctions in Zimbabwe because the Bush/Blair/Howard regimes that first imposed these sanctions were largely ultra-right wing imperialist regimes trying to bring down a nationalist regime commandeered by the uncompromising and highly principled Robert Mugabe.
What we have now is the West demanding change in the internal behaviour of the Zimbabwean political leadership, and we have the Zanu-PF side of Government, itself the most powerful side of the inclusive Government; demanding a change of behaviour from the external forces besieging the country.
Susan Page, the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs in the US State Department was recently in Zimbabwe and she announced a policy shift towards reforming Zanu-PF as opposed to the traditional US call for the end of Zanu-PF and whatever it stands for.
It was an invitation from the beast, and those with inclinations towards the imperial authority must watch out.
Page’s visit was after the EU removal of 35 persons from the sanctions list, persons whose only crime was being married to people who happen to be viewed by MDC-T list compilers as hostile to the prospect of a Morgan Tsvangirai led government in Zimbabwe.
The rather meaningless concession by the EU and the reconciliatory tone from Page was like the October 12 2008 removal of North Korea by the US from a list of “terrorism-sponsoring states”, whatever that means.
North Korea had been listed on this infamous group of states since 1988. George W Bush had probably realised the futility of economic sanctions. On their part, North Korea had submitted a 60-page activity report on its nuclear programme, itself the real issue behind the sanctions regime in question, apart from other strategic interests.
For two countries that had a conflict dating back to 1945 it was a bit of a wonder to many to understand the US move and it became increasingly hard to explain what had triggered the sudden thaw from both sides. The November 2006 Republicans’ loss of majority seats in the US Congress was largely cited as the driving force behind Bush’s unexpected behaviour.
Another reason proffered was the depletion of war potential, fettered by the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars. Without the easy option of going to war, Bush did not want to keep humiliating himself at the hands of Kim Jong Il, a man considered to be extremely arrogant by Western powers.
The other explanation given is that US stakes in North Korea have significantly diminished and that also could have influenced Bush’s shift in policy.
Yet others cited Bush’s fretfulness towards gaining acclamation for his diplomatic performance toward his term’s expiry – an end whose image was not so good for his Republicans party.
Others have argued that Bush wanted to tilt North Korean soft-liners towards his side, something we hear the US wants to do with some people believed to be soft-liners in Zanu-PF, meaning those Zanu-PF members who respect and have a wish for the domination of Western influence in the economic affairs of the country.
North Korea had its own reasons for shifting policy. Some argue that they were facing the limit of the nuclear threat strategy from a political and technological perspective.
Some say this was a desperate move to secure the survival of the Kim Jong Il regime, while others argue that the pressure of economic sanctions was now biting.
Others argue that it was insuperable isolation and increasing pressure from the international community that did the trick for North Korea.
We have heard similar arguments when people debate why Zanu-PF agreed to form an inclusive Government with Tsvangirai’s MDC. Through the lens of economic sanctions we can explore beneath the surface. According to Jong-Yun Bae and Sang-young-Rhyu the United States scrapped “invalid US-led economic sanctions that had little policy effectiveness.”
What the US was doing was to realign sanctions to build a multilateral governance over North Korea. This is exactly what the West wanted to do by telling South Africa and Sadc to do Western bidding on Zimbabwe.
Precisely, this is why Westerners told MDC-T to call the agreement leading to the formation of the inclusive Government the Global Political Agreement.
They wanted to introduce a multilateral governance system over Zimbabwe. The myth and realities of the politics of economic sanctions are such that sanctions become so confusing that people are divided, conflicts abound and economies are wrecked.
The political governance of economic sanctions is complex in that there is always the need to keep up the appearance of altruism and high level humanitarian values, regardless of the fact that sanctions in reality hardly have anything to do with these humanitarian high sounding values.
Essentially, economic sanctions are tools for exercising influence, and they are strategic tools for realising goals for diplomacy.
Woodrow Wilson described economic sanctions as a “peaceful, silent, deadly remedy” and deadly they are.
To some they are viewed as a favourable alternative to armed conflict and the often cited examples include UN Resolution 253 of 1968 on Rhodesia; Resolution 421 of 1977 on South Africa; Resolution 1718 on North Korea; Resolution 1737 of 2006 on Iran and Resolution 1874 of 2009 on North Korea.
The reality about economic sanctions is that less than 24 percent of all sanctions ever imposed since 1945 have produced the intended result.
South Africa is often considered the most successful example, but political changes made through the economic sanctions were dismally meagre compared to the cost.
The majority of South Africans are still living in dire poverty close to two decades after independence.
Secondly it is those in the middle and lower classes that often bear the brunt of economic sanctions. Some have even argued that this leads to the weakened potential of the middle class to carry out an uprising even if they wanted one. They argue as well that economic sanctions aggravate income disparity. Many Zimbabweans would concur.
Thirdly, economic sanctions can backfire, solidifying the targeted government and rallying the masses into Anti-America and Anti-West sentiment -something the Anti-Sanctions Campaign has already created in Zimbabwe. The March 2 National Anti-sanctions launch had hundreds of thousands of people gathered to voice an anti-West sentiment and to rally around the national flag.
Fourthly, targetted countries may seek alternative countries to form economic ties with, eventually excluding the sanctioning countries. This is what happened with Zimbabwe’s Look East policy – a policy that has resulted in huge incursions into Zimbabwe’s economy by China and India – of course at the expense of the sanctions-wielding West.
Fifthly, the longer the economic sanctions remain in place, the more the confidence of the international community in the usefulness of the same sanctions is undermined.
Ten years of sanctioning Zimbabwe with the intended regime change goal failing so dismally to materialise, the confidence of the international community in the West’s diplomatic policies has greatly been undermined, and this is why each day there are scores of countries calling for the lifting of these sanctions.
Sadc is leading the pack with some countries mooting the idea of doing their own national petitions against the West’s sanctions on Zimbabwe. In conclusion, the UN’s own internal evaluations since the 1990s revealed that its own economic sanctions were not effective.
Evaluations on Iraq, Burundi and Cuba show that consequences went against the UN’s own human rights principles and in all the cases the sanctions did not produce the intended results.
As they have just done in Zimbabwe, economic sanctions wreaked havoc on ordinary citizens of these countries, widened social disparities, provoked illegal and immoral behaviours like corruption and high crime rates. All this contradicts the intentions that are enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations as observed by Robert A Pape.
The high unemployment levels caused by the West’s illegal sanctions in Zimbabwe are against the principles of the UN Charter, and the 2007 cholera outbreak that killed about 4,000 people was a gross violation of the right to life.
It is in the interest of Zimbabweans to do what the West fears most.
They do not want to face the angry masses of Zimbabwe if the crippling economic sanctions in place right now are to go, the West must face angry masses through the Anti-Sanctions Petition that people are currently signing.
Zimbabwe, we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on [email protected] or reason@rwafawa rova.com or visit www.rwafawarova.com