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Gibson Nyikadzino Correspondent
A conscious application of logical, critical thinking and analytical skills amongst the national body of scholars, politicians and even citizens are indicatively fading and replaced by emotional verbosity on issues that call for the collective assessment from all citizens.
The important issues that call for reasonable arguments and explanations, depending with the worldview one has, continue to be buried in very politicised debates that have failed to prepare, mould and structure the expectations needed for posterity.
A recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Professor Alena Douhan on “the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights” in Zimbabwe is one that should help bring citizens together intellectually or expose our diversity of opinion.
Instead of the report and its contents being welcomed as an avenue to arouse critical socio-economic and political debate that advances and informs policy formulation to protect the national interest being threatened by sanctions, there has been condemnation from the quarters of opposition politicians labelling and name-calling on the UN expert.
A stark reminder about these sad developments trigger the desire to make a conscious analysis on the genesis of the use of sanctions, not only in Zimbabwe or then Rhodesia, but on the basis of what colonial powers agreed in the years preceding colonialism.
There is a document that is used by Western nations to justify their sanctions on countries they want the world to label pariah states when they think their interests and economic pursuits are being hindered, especially by the indigenous people that suffered through colonialism.
The document, known either as the Doctrine of Discovery or the International Law of Colonialism, has had a significant and detrimental effect on the indigenous peoples all over the world.
It was an idea crafted through the collective agreement between the church and Western nations comprising England, Portugal and Spain in the 14th Century.
Today, the same doctrine continues to want to restrict the human, sovereign, commercial, and property rights of the indigenous people and their governments and is not only a fascinating artefact of world history, but it is still a valid principle in many nations.
To properly comprehend the contemporary significance of the Doctrine of Discovery from the 15th century, it is key for people to comprehend another fundamental of international law.
The concept of “intertemporal” law states that land titles and current territorial borders “are to be determined by the law in place at the time the title was initially asserted and not by the law of today.”
Thus, how European nations divided the lands and resources of the indigenous peoples and nations in the distant past still defines national boundaries today.
This explains why, in the case of Zimbabwe’s colonisation in 1890, British imperial merchant Cecil John Rhodes had to be granted the Royal Charter by Queen Victoria as an implementing colonial authority.
Not only were the British involved, Portugal also convinced Pope Nicholas to issue an order ratifying its adventures along the west coast of Africa.
The Pope granted Portugal powers “to invade, seek out, seize, vanquish, and subdue all African possessions, all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and subject their persons to perpetual slavery.”
But how much longer can the world tolerate the kind of ignorance, and non-human principles of death, domination, prejudice, inequity, and violation of sovereign and human rights that the Doctrine of Discovery represents?
Basing on the Doctrine of Discovery, the pronouncement of unjustified sanctions and use of coercive diplomacy by the West on Zimbabwe is a consequence emanating from the international law of colonialism.
In the era of force
In 2001, when the United States imposed illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe, this was 10 years after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the emergence of a unipolar world policed by the US.
During that decade, US global power in its forms including military, economic, technological, cultural, political became a great reality of the 21st century and never before has one country been so powerful or unrivalled.
This was a period in which the US was showcasing its political and economic might on perceived weaker and small states.
In 1999, through NATO, the US bombed Yugoslavia for close to 80 days and the justification given for the bombing was to end the humanitarian crisis involving the large outflow of Kosovar Albanian refugees caused by Yugoslav forces.
It was also a time when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, not because it had the revealing reasons for justification, but because it was seeing itself as the rising global power guaranteed with deploying its coercive instruments without opposition.
Former South Africa President Thabo Mbeki also revealed during this period that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had approached him to get guarantees as Britain wanted to militarily invade Zimbabwe after the latter embarked on the reclamation of its land heritage and redistributing it to the landless black majority to correct a colonial imbalance.
Such was the time Zimbabwe was slapped with economic sanctions.
Our land, their property?
When European explorers planted flags and religious symbols in the lands owned by the indigenous Zimbabweans, they were making legal claims of ownership and domination over the lands, assets, and peoples they had “discovered”.
The idea that “discovery” of ‘unknown lands’ carried with it the right to assert sovereignty and claim ownership was used by Europeans to justify appropriating indigenous lands.
The “discoveries” by people like David Livingstone and in other areas Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama were a colonial choreography.
Their claims for the “discoveries” they made were however justified by racial, ethnocentric, and religious ideas of the alleged superiority of European Christians.
The punitive sanctions and coercive measures restricting the enjoyment of rights in Zimbabwe today as initiated by the US emanate from the Doctrine of Discovery because it does not recognise that indigenous people in Zimbabwe should own their land.
Zimbabwe was targeted by the sanctions regimes from both the US and European Union through accusations that it sought to reverse the international law of colonialism which gives preference to the Caucasians over other races.
For redistributing land and getting punished, the Western community also sent shivers to other countries in Africa and its southern region that once they embark on land redistribution, the fate of Zimbabwe will be theirs, too.
When African countries fail to reclaim their land, it is not because they do not want, but they are scared of taking the bold steps to empower their people in fear of the reprisals and retributive acts from the West effected in the Doctrine of Discovery.
Such is the racist agenda that is used to justify inhumane actions on the indigenous people, mostly in Africa.
All settler societies need to learn how to repudiate and repeal the international law of colonialism because it is based on ethnocentric, racist, religious, and feudal ideas.
It is important for Zimbabweans to look at the illegal sanctions imposed on the country not from the advocacy of human and property rights point of view advanced by the West, but should understand that sanctions are being used to preserve the interests of the West by inflicting pain on our people.
Zimbabweans, remember we are one!
Online Reporter