Sanctions slinging match

into a slinging match between Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation chairman Mr Goodwills Masimirembwa and the British ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Mark Canning.
The breakaway session was on sanctions-induced challenges on Zimbabwe’s mining sector in respect of parastatals and their subsidiaries.
Mr Masimirembwa, the key speaker, said the sanctions were not targeted (at individuals) but were aimed at creating discontent among Zimbabweans so that they would rise against the Government or President Mugabe, in particular.
He said the sanctions were also targeted at frustrating foreign investors from the United States and Europe from investing in the country.
“These sanctions are targeted at you because if you are an investor from the US or any European country, then you can not legally do business with us.
“But we do not have such problems with our Asian friends. So we have to work together to remove them (he sanctions) because we need each other,” he said.
But this did not go down well with the British Ambassador. He responded by saying that Mr Masimirembwa’s assertions were “self-serving political nonsense”.
He said contrary to assertions that the EU and the US were preventing their businesspeople from investing in the country, the EU and US were open for business.
“I have personally been working hard to bring British companies to this country and the organisers of this conference are based in Britain,” he said.
Mr Canning said the ZMDC was on the sanctions list because its operations were not transparent.
Soon after the ambassador had sat down, former Zimbabwean Ambassador to China, Chris Mutsvangwa stood up to say the Union Jack was lowered in 1980 and as such Britain should not be concerned about the operations of Zimbabwean companies.
“Zimbabwe has never attempted to look into the operations of companies operating in Britain. So, why should you be interested in our companies?”
Mr Masimirembwa said the attitude exhibited by Ambassador Canning was unfortunate, as typical duplicity of Western leadership.
“Please do not come here and teach us your stupid lessons,” he said, adding that the West was good at playing double standards.
“You do not have clean hands,” he said.
“You have an infamous guise of fighting politicians . . . look at what is happening in Egypt. Mubarak was once a friend of the US and Britain, where is he now? Look at Libya. Gadaffi was also a friend, but what is happening now?”
In his presentation, Mr Masimirembwa had said those investors investing in the country from the West were having to cleverly circumvent the sanctions.
He also highlighted the issue of the interception of US$2,9 million from diamond proceeds and for other local companies by the US office of Foreign Assets as a major impediment to the local diamond industry and the re-opening of companies such as Bindura Nickel Mine.
“This is not a lot of money but what is of concern is the kind of message that this action sends out there,” he said.
Mr Masimirembwa said they were also aware of the activities of Canada and Australia which he said were working hard to stop the Kimberly Processing Certification team from allowing Zimbabwe to sell its diamonds because local diamonds are easy to exploit than theirs.
He said companies that were jointly exploiting diamonds in Chiadzwa were getting good returns and had so far received US$70 million which they have taken out of the country without any problems.
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Joseph Kanyekanye supported the call for the removal of sanctions. He said they had constrained the flow of lines of credit into the country. He said the World Bank, formed as a reconstruction bank, had also stopped assisting the country. Yet it was responsible for most infrastructural developments that occurred in the country in the 1980s and 1990s.
He said most of the support offered then was notwithstanding the debt that the country had inherited from before independence.
To this end, he said the Bretton Woods institution was not supposed to use the country’s debt as a reason to deny it funding because it had previously supported the country even when it owed a lot of money.
As a way of fighting the sanctions, Mr Kanyekanye said Zimbabweans needed to unite and speak with one voice.
“We must unite and sing the same song as Zimbabweans. We must beat these sanctions,” he said.
He also called on all political parties who are signatories to the Global Political Agreement to honour in full their obligations.
Responding to the British Ambassador’s comments Mr Kanyekanye said his comments were unfortunate and called for dialogue.
“We need to engage as we share a dint of history, in fact our systems are more British because of our colonial ties, so you must understand us better,” he said.