With scores of Zimbabwean companies and businessmen featuring on the sanctions list, they surely should provide statistics of how they have been affected.
This is the work of auditors, which an educated country like Zimbabwe has in abundance.
Zimbabwe has universities and other institutions of higher learning that should have an easy task looking at the sanctions issue.
The Herald
By Tichaona Zindoga
After being confronted by a group of demonstrators and allegedly challenged to sign the anti-sanctions petition recently, MDC-T secretary general and Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who did not face off with the youths, later made an interesting statement to the media.
He poured water on the anti-sanctions drive, in an offhand, arrogant if not almost disarming manner.
President Mugabe launched the National Anti--Sanctions Petition Campaign in March in Harare seeking to present a raucous two million signatures against the United States and the European Union which imposed sanctions on the country.
Buying into the bilateral land dispute between Britain and Zimbabwe, the US promulgated the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act in 2001 while the EU followed suit a year later with similar measures.
The day, which brought thousands of people outside the Harare Showgrounds remains one of the most politically compelling in recent times as around 30 000 people came together.
The sheer significance of numbers even made a downpour that had threatened to break on the multitudes of people to scatter and waft off.
Speakers from different sections of society spoke against sanctions.
The message was clear.
Not even the alibi-like press conference that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai called at his Number 2 Lyndhurst Lane Strathaven home in Harare failed to take the sting and zing of the message.
The people had spoken.
And, when the campaign was taken to the provinces, it had a generous uptake.
Now the two-million figure has reportedly been surpassed with numbers said to be daring the three-million mark.
The youths that went to Biti's offices at the New Government Complex sought to take the campaign to the doorstep of the man widely believed to have authored sanctions against Zimbabwe.
But Biti did not turn up because he had allegedly been in meetings.
"Even if I was not in meetings, I was not going to sign that stupid petition because I am not open to political and bankrupt thugs. I am bound by a principle and that principle is what I am," he averred.
Adding, "I cannot and was not going to legitimise an illegitimate process.
"The entire sanctions issue has been heavily politicised and the gymnastics you witnessed at my offices are part of the politicisation of that issue."
He said that the sanctions issue was a Zanu-PF baby just like his party had its own programmes.
Biti, a lawyer by profession, thus got away with it.
Those who see the injustice in the sanctions that the West has imposed on Zimbabwe and thus believe in the value of the anti-sanctions campaign will no doubt feel slighted by Biti's remarks.
After all the sanctions have been acknowledged, revised and otherwise upheld by those that imposed them.
Their existence is a well-known fact.
The Global Political Agreement between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations on which the current inclusive Government is predicated acknowledged the presence and undesirability of sanctions binding all parties to work for their removal.
However, the issue of sanctions remains a tricky subject which the likes of Biti can willfully mock, defer, deflect or skirt around.
The reason is simple: there has not been a systematic and scientific effort to debunk the issue relating to the cause and effects of the sanctions.
In this vein, while it is widely remarked that Biti and others authored the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, American sanctions package against Zimbabwe, who has come up with sound evidence to demonstrate that?
Were Biti to confront any of the youths that came to his offices to make good of their claim that he is the brains behind Zidera, would they be forthcoming?
It is highly unlikely as well that were Biti to call the demonstrators to provide evidence of sanctions scant would be available, at least among the party that confronted him.
A random pick from the street would yield similar, unflattering results.
But, the sanctions are there, aren't they?
Biti and his MDC company once pigheadedly denied the sanctions' existence but, they have since forced to grudgingly acknowledge them, with a lot of sophistry to take refuge in.
While Minister Biti met the likes of Russ Feingold in America over sanctions, a team of Government and regional officials have sought to have the sanctions removed.
The British and Americans have revealed that they work with the MDC, in particular Biti, in coming up with sanctions hit lists and the general direction these measures should take.
While there might be compelling evidence around to bare it all on sanctions, precious little has been proffered to the ordinary man and woman.
If anything, the issue sanctions has been discussed on largely an emotional, non-scientific, non-empirical and political scale.
It is little doubt that while lacking the empirical evidence of sanctions, the many people that made the big crowd outside the Showgrounds that day and those who have signed the anti-sanctions petition did so out of the patriotism.
This is patriotism that hates that other countries would dare craft laws against this sovereign land; the same countries being those that which the people defeated to attain Independence in 1980.
The same countries that people have been told were behind the economic malaise of the past decade.
The same countries that created the MDC to undo the gains of the liberation struggle including the land reform programme that reconnected the majority blacks with the land that had been stolen from their ancestors.
So, from the political perspective, those against sanctions have done well, even in the face of accusations of "politicking" and propaganda to the contrary.
But more needs to be done.
In fact, more should have been done already to prove that sanctions are hurtful and constitute a national emergency.
In imposing sanctions against Zimbabwe, the US says the southern African country poses an "extraordinary and continuing threat" to the national security and interests of the US.
The United States hides behind the rhetoric of democracy and human rights, saying Zimbabwe's alleged assault on these poses mortal danger to its administration.
Zimbabwe knows that by reclaiming its land, it was not only righting a historical and socio-economic wrong, and embarking on an agrarian revolution that is why it was being sanctioned.
Faced with a hostile counter-measure in the form of US-EU sanctions, why did the country not impose an emergency of its own, one which would have seen Zimbabwe respond in equivalent measure?
It will be recalled that there was once an attempt to play down these sanctions; until the sanctions really hurt.
At the signing of the GPA, why was there no effort to entrench the stated resolve against the interference that sanctions are in the laws of the land, making another amendment to that effect?
Belated measures by a badly exposed Zimbabwe have been but a desperate catch-up game.
During the launch, a call was made that British and American companies, about 800 of them, should disown sanctions and start working with the Government against their mother countries or face sanction themselves.
This was a reverberation of the Zanu-PF conference that was held in Mutare last December.
A combative stance, but has anyone heard anything more on that?
Or on the law that makes it illegal, as it in actual fact is, to campaign or invite sanctions?
One of the greatest points of the anti-sanctions launch was the testimony of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries.
Joseph Kanyekanye, the president of the body, demonstrated how industry has been affected.
In a series of articles that were published in The Sunday Mail he wrote in part: "Are sanctions Western myths, reality or mass deception?
The United States embassy in Harare has declared that sanctions do not affect ordinary Zimbabweans but few individuals and companies.
"The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic recovery Act (2001) or Zidera's existence at the same time with the fact that the US has a visa system and border control measures that could alternatively be used to deal with these individuals and firms suggest some cognitive resonance on me or them.
"Why legislate to deal with individuals when there are already travel instruments?
"Why is the US government maintaining Zidera if there is no intention to stifle efforts by Zimbabwe to deal with its debt and secure funding?
"It is analogous to a person with a nicotine fit who runs around from bar to bar looking for cigarettes while claiming they do not smoke.
"It needs to be pointed out that with the exception of the PTA Bank, Afreximbank and lately the Development Bank of South Africa and some China Development Bank support, Zimbabwe has failed to access the international debt market largely because of sanctions.
"Industry needs at least US$3 billion to creep back!
I have met representatives of virtually every multi-lateral agency to a point that I know their standard line for declining financial assistance.
"They always say sort the political issues first and money will flow. It cannot be anything else or we run the risk of saying that these aforementioned institutions do not do proper due diligences.
"On the contrary, the Afreximbank president is on record as indicating that this all-weather friend of Zimbabwe industries has never failed to get its money back. Zimbabweans, use your world-renowned literacy and
judge for yourself!"
This kind of technocratic and scientific evidence presents just what talk of sanctions has lacked over the years.
By the way, CZI once denied the existence of sanctions, making Kanyakanye's contribution all the more valuable at this juncture.
With scores of Zimbabwean companies and businessmen featuring on the sanctions list, they surely should provide statistics of how they have been affected.
This is the work of auditors, which an educated country like Zimbabwe has in abundance.
Zimbabwe has universities and other institutions of higher learning that should have an easy task looking at the sanctions issue.
Private citizens have been barred from transacting with American companies because they sought to use sanctioned institutions like banks and Government ministries for their commerce.
Someone like Biti won't tell them that sanctions are "targetted" at certain Zanu-PF individuals only.
The statement by former US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell that the living conditions in 2005 had regressed to 1950's levels might need revisiting for the direction the country faced under sanctions.
After all Dell predicted the implosion of the country's economy under sanctions-induced hyper-inflationary pressures.
It was only through extraordinary measures by Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono that Zimbabwe's economy stayed afloat.
In fact, Gono has written a whole book on the depredations of sanctions in the turbulent period of hyperinflation.
His input to the knowledge of sanctions will be invaluable.
Businessman and politician Aguy Georgias is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the European Union over sanctions.
He has published articles on the subject.
The EU has curiously removed him from its hit list.
He has the facts, and presumably has signed the anti-sanctions petition.
There have been arguments on the possibility and desirability of Zimbabwe's class action suit against the EU and US.
One analyst has written about fighting sanctions at the United Nations on the basis that they make the ordinary people suffer.
Having a repository of the effects of sanctions will give a footing to such a venture.
Zimbabweans can ill-afford to be mocked by Biti that their belief in the injustice of sanctions is "stupid" and "bankrupt".
Zanu-PF members and other well-meaning economists and technocrats should not take this lying down.
Biti might be bound by the Moise Tshombe or Nyathi principles of selling out to outsiders and, it is the duty of every technocrat worth his salt to demonstrate that they are beholden to the cause and sovereignty of Zimbabwe.
It is not to be forgotten that Biti's principles also include starving civil servants as he follows the policies of the IMF that gave Zimbabwe the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme.
As such, the devil cannot be allowed to run away with the gospel.
Demonstrating the illegality and the effects of sanctions should reveal the fatuity and evil of his so-called principles.
tichaona.zindoga@zimpapers.co.zw
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