It is to be hoped that the West is not trying to run away from its economic war crimes of sanctions.
Whereas the West is given to making demands and setting conditions, Zimbabwe must throw its hurt back at it.
This is not just about vindictiveness or intransigence: it simply is to say that if the West is so hurt about the human rights of which it is a self-proclaimed champion and policeman, its sanctions have hurt Zimbabwe so.
Only after such openness will the relations be healed.
By Tichaona Zindoga
In the last couple of days Zimbabwe has been involved in a not-so-usual diplomatic engagement with the United States of America and the European Union.
The latter have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe at the instigation of Britain which was stung by the loss of colonially-gotten lands in Zimbabwe through the fast Track Land Reform which Government instituted to benefit marginalized black majority.
Of course, the Western countries do not say so, preferring to hide behind the discourse of human rights, which they allege members of the Zimbabwe Government violate.
Zimbabwe believes that both sets of sanctions are illegal as they were imposed outside the ambit of the United Nations Security Council.
In fact, it has become almost customary for various commentators to prefix “sanctions” with “illegal’ when talking of the punitive measures that the West has invoked!
Re-engagement with the West, which was formalized under the Global Political Agreement, has yet to bear meaningful fruit.
The US and EU authorities have even had the temerity to maltreat and ostracise some members of the so-called re-engagement team.
But then something happened recently that might be the game changer.
The Zimbabwe Government, through its chief legal office of the Attorney General, wrote to the EU asking the bloc to furnish Zimbabwe with reasons for the sanctions or face litigation.
The litigation would be executed on the very European soil whereon sanctions were rashly and illegally imposed against Zimbabwe.
It is a safe guess that the move by Zimbabwe jolted the EU into action and dispatched its managing director for Africa Nick Wescott into the country in the wake of the two-week ultimatum.
Although Wescott has been singing the same old hymn concerning his (divided) bloc’s stance on Zimbabwe, saying that the sanctions were imposed legally and that they would be removed if Zimbabwe met certain conditions, something can be read in EU’s reaction.
A Sunday Mail editorial critically observed that the EU had “blinked too soon”.
And Wescott gave away that Zimbabwe could give the EU a taste of its own medicine.
He admitted Zimbabwe could seek recompense at the European courts.
“The measures (read sanctions) we have taken were done legally,” he said.
“If anybody disagrees with that they are free to challenge it.”
Whatever Wescott might say, even bordering on Dutch courage, it would seem that Zimbabwe might after all have its day to stand up to the bully in the EU, whatever the outcome.
Matter-of-factly this is not unprecedented.
Industrialist and Zanu-PF member Senator Aguy Georgias has successfully challenged the deportation of his children from the UK where they have been studying.
He has been urging that a class suit be instituted against the EU over the sanctions.
Interestingly, Georgias has been removed from the EU hitlist.
A layman’s observation is that the EU authorities did not want to be embarrassed and so had to remove, and muzzle Georgias.
And surely what Zimbabwe can do against the EU it can against the US, and perhaps succeed to sling the twin goliath with the same pebble?
It will not be quite safe to surmise that the same force that drew Wescott here is what drove US Ambassador here, Charles Ray to request to see President Mugabe.
However, apart from the interesting coincidence, the developments are important.
Call them positive, if you like.
(This writer recently counseled the American diplomat to engage Zimbabwe in a respectful fashion.)
The US envoy regretted that so much time was being spent on disagreements rather than areas of convergence. He identified that “every coin has two sides” and that it was time to paint a more realistic picture.
Expectedly, he said he had no control over the offending Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act which his country promulgated against Zimbabwe.
But he promised to make recommendations to the effect of removing the same.
Now, it will be interesting to see how Zimbabwe’s relations with the West fare in light of such developments.
On one level, it must be admitted that just as Ray points out of the two sides of the coin, and Wescott says the EU “will continue to watch events”, inevitably there ought to be, and there will be compromises on both sides.
As it is, these compromises will be both political and legal.
The West has been coercing Zimbabwe via sanctions which are intended to make the economy scream.
The sanctions are a form of terrorism covering the economy, politics and media among other sectors.
December 21, 2001 on which day former US President George W Bush signed Zdera is Zimbabwe’s equivalent of September 11 1999, terrorist attacks.
So how would our principals engage on the issue?
Zimbabwe’s reply to the sanctions terror of the West, outside of the near-futile reengagement, has been to challenge it in the courts where hopefully there can be an even playing field.
If this latter recourse presents the West with a nightmare, if EU’s apparently fast-blinking knee-jerk response to the ultimatum is anything to go by, does it not present a pointer to how a wronged Zimbabwe should go ahead?
A wronged Zimbabwe has lost so much during at the hands of sanctions.
Academic Dr Tafataona Mahoso recently gave a glimpse into how and what Zimbabwe had lost due to sanctions:
- The cost to the whole economy of having to pay cash upfront for imports over 11 years;
- The cost of higher transport and energy expenditure due to lack of credit, restricted access to spare parts and relying on outdated machinery;
- The value of lost export revenue over 11 years;
- The value of lost income tax resulting from shrinkage of jobs and eroded salaries over 11 years;
- The value lost through the emigration of professionals and other skilled workers to foreign jurisdictions;
- The cost of environmental damage resulting from the shrinkage of power generation, power imports, and the shelving of rural electrification programmes;
- The cost of induced smuggling and other corruption caused by rising costs and acute shortages of goods and services;
- Health costs arising from the collapse of infrastructure, the rising prevalence of eradicable diseases, the failure to repair or replace water and sewerage systems and inability to import medical equipment and drugs;
- The cost of hyperinflation and the collapse of the national currency which wiped out pensions, medical aid schemes, insurance policies, mortgages and savings;
- The cost, in business terms, of the propaganda war which was mounted by the Anglo-Saxon countries and their sponsored lobbies and parties to justify and maintain illegal sanctions; and
- The cost of sabotage activities meant to accompany and intensify the illegal embargo.
In light of the foregoing, Zimbabwe, if it has its day in the court, will have to find redress.
It is to be hoped that the West is not trying to run away from its economic war crimes of sanctions.
Whereas the West is given to making demands and setting conditions, Zimbabwe must throw its hurt back at it.
This is not just about vindictiveness or intransigence: it simply is to say that if the West is so hurt about the human rights of which it is a self-proclaimed champion and policeman, its sanctions have hurt Zimbabwe so.
Only after such openness will the relations be healed.
· tichaona.zindoga@zimpapers.co.zw
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