The Sunday Mail
AFRICAN FOCUS
By Tafataona Mahoso.
The desperation of super-powers (and the thousands of NGOs they fund) over a small country of less than 14 million people is bound to make a juicy and lasting story.
That is why the publishers and editors of The Zimbabwe Independent, The Standard, The Sunday Times, The Zimbabwean and NewsDay — all seem to have reached the end of their wits, trying to find new angles from which the story of the illegal and racist Anglo-Saxon sanctions against Zimbabwe can be suppressed. And on October 4 2010 MPs from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC faction tried to force the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) to hide that its member companies have been ruined by the same illegal sanctions.
The sanctions-denying Press have gone as far as turning US embassy officials into regular columnists for their papers; they have targeted any and all effective Zimbabwean communicators of the anti-sanctions message for gratuitous defamatory attacks; and, most recently, their sponsors took the desperate step of hiring Liberian Deputy Minister Kpandel Fayia to write a false report on the basis of which it was hoped Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa diamonds could still be banned from the global market.
The problem faced by the Anglo-Saxon powers is a simple one: They have mobilised a gargantuan ideological, PR and propaganda machinery to deny the reality and impact of these illegal and racist sanctions on the people of Zimbabwe. The size, sophistication, direction and orchestrated activities of this machinery alone enable the people of Zimbabwe to appreciate the pervasive and intrusive manifestations of these sanctions throughout the society and throughout the world. Last week I showed how the impact of these illegal sanctions hits anyone who enters Kingstons bookstores in Harare with open eyes.
By trying to lynch Zimbabwe in every forum, through all channels and on every platform, the Anglo-Saxon powers have awakened the entire population of Zimbabwe to the evil intent of their sanctions. Citizens have seen Zimbabwe being pursued and pestered at the Commonwealth, at the IMF, at the World Bank, at Kimberley Process meetings, at the EU, at the UN — but each time Zimbabwe has overcome and exposed the aggressors both morally and legally.
The problem which the Anglo-Saxon powers and those they have paid to cover up their tracks now face can be seen by considering, for example, one story in The Daily News on Sunday for July 13 2003: “Cyclone Bush hits Africa”.
That article was written immediately after the MDC’s promised “mass uprising”, called “The Final Push”, to remove the Zimbabwe Government from power. The “Final Push” had just flopped in June. So by July 2003, “Cyclone Bush”, that is the US President George W. Bush and the machinery at his command, was supposed to complete the “Final Push” which the MDC had failed to pull off. The article gleefully celebrated all the fresh effects of illegal sanctions and financial warfare upon the people, but without any direct reference to the economic and financial nature of the same sanctions. The sanctions had to be put across in the media as if they were merely political restrictions on a handful of officials. Yet real financial and economic sanctions had actually been unveiled as part of an acute emergency in the foreign policies of the US, UK and EU toward Zimbabwe.
For example, all US declarations of the anti-Zimbabwe sanctions and their renewals are issued in the form of emergency decrees!
In the wake of George W. Bush’s visit to South Africa, MDC officials and supporting NGO leaders flocked to that country to try to meet the US president. The Daily News on Sunday told Zimbabweans in a celebratory fashion that:
“Zimbabwe has failed to print its own money, inflation is over 300 percent and unemployment is over 80 percent . . . The country is fast hurtling towards becoming a failed state like Liberia and Somalia.”
By November 2005, US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell realised that the impact of the Anglo-Saxon sanctions on the people had become difficult to blame on so-called “corruption and mismanagement”, partly because people could see the over-zealousness of the Anglo-Saxon powers themselves and those paid to cheer their assaults on the Zimbabwe economy. The idea of a “Cyclone Bush” hitting Africa and finishing off the Zimbabwean economy where the MDC’s rioting and stayaways had failed to deliver, a “final push” did not really sound like a convincing “mismanagement” story.
So, Ambassador Dell mounted a campaign which took him to Mutare, Bulawayo and Harare. Its purpose was to recognise the unprecedented nature of the devastation, telling students at Africa University that the livelihoods of the people of Zimbabwe had been brought back and down to the levels of 1953 and admitting that the sanctions law called the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act was indeed the “cornerstone” of US policy toward Zimbabwe; but it did not mean real economic sanctions. The idea was that the US could meet the people of Zimbabwe half-way by recognising their suffering and offering crocodile tears and some relief (chema ne nyaradzo) while diverting and directing their hostility toward the people’s own elected Government. This seemed to work until after March 2008.
Unfortunately for the Anglo-Saxon powers and their local supporters, the people began to piece together the parts of the puzzle and began to attack the illegal sanctions and call for their immediate lifting. It did not matter what the US and EU chose to call whatever it was they had imposed on any or all Zimbabweans: The devastation was everywhere and these white powers should simply prove to the people and their leaders that all forms of Anglo-Saxon interference in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs stopped. This is the clearest message from the just concluded COPAC outreach, and it has precipitated a panic. The Anglo-Saxon powers had thought that the relief economy and the people’s own partial victory over the illegal sanctions would quickly make the sanctions story stale, irrelevant and uninteresting.
The opposite is true: By refusing to lift the illegal and racist sanctions, the superpowers have put themselves in the shoes of Goliath! The Goliath story does not become stale, outdated or irrelevant. What is going to happen is that the little but blessed people of Zimbabwe will discover that five years after Christopher Dell’s overbearing lecture (saying that livelihoods had been brought down and back to 1953 but not because of sanctions) the sanctions story is everywhere. The people will discover, for instance, that each one of the following stories is, in fact, a sanctions story presented as something other than what it really is:
“Zim slips lower on (World Bank) business index”, Herald Business, November 5 2010; “Woo back lecturers in the Diaspora”, Chronicle, November 3 2010; “Zim airspace shock: Civil aviation authority admits obsolete equipment makes flying into the country dangerous”, Sunday Times, October 31 2010; “13 000 face UK deportation”, NewsDay, October 30 2010; “Sanctions not to blame-EU”, Zimbabwe Independent, October 29 2010; “Agriculture set to continue on recovery path”, Zimbabwe Independent, October 29 2010; “Addressing industry’s recovery needs”, Zimbabwe Independent, October 29 2010; “Those pieces of silver make a difference”, NewsDay, October 28 2010; “Extend multiple currency use (in place of own currency) — Bankers Association of Zimbabwe”, Zimbabwe Independent, October 22 2010; “Dire consequences of rural poverty”, The Standard, October 18 2010; “Farm workers suffer due to Zim land reform”, Sunday Times, October 10 2010; “End sanctions, Zuma tells EU”, The Herald, September 29 2010; “Copac violence dampens Zim, US re-engagement”, NewsDay, September 29 2010; “Zim’s economic upsurge falters”, Zimbabwe Independent, August 6 2010; “Government seeks US$2 billion for industry”, Herald Business, July 30 2010; “Economy misses production target (by nearly 50 percent)”, The Business Connect, May 3 2010; “Jaggers closes 11 branches”, Herald Business, April 19 2010; “Edgars closes 20 branches”, Herald Business, January 20 2010; “Zim (Trade) shipments fall 90 percent”, Sunday Mail Business, January 3 2010; “Annual shutdown (now) mere routine”, Herald Business, December 17 2009; and “No going back on job cuts, says Airzim chief”, Herald Business, November 9 2009.
The illegal sanctions story could have diminished in importance if the Anglo-Saxon powers had removed the sanctions immediately after the March 2008 elections or just at the time of the formation of the inclusive Government.
Some Zimbabweans would have concluded that the Anglo-Saxon powers just wanted to get their sponsored party, the MDC formations, into office and that they at least liked and respected the MDC formations while hating and seeking to insult and destroy the liberation movement in Zanu-PF.
By becoming even more vindictive and cynical after the formation of the inclusive Government, the Anglo-Saxon powers enlarged, deepened and entrenched the sanctions story for the following reasons:
l Continuing sanctions showed disregard for Sadc and AU diplomacy which produced and guaranteed the inter-party agreement which produced the inclusive Government.
Continuing the sanctions after February 13 2009 demonstrated to the whole population that those sponsoring the MDC formations had absolutely no respect for these parties which came to be seen more widely as mere tools to be used for a much wider, much deeper and continent-wide objective beyond the installation of the MDC formations.
l In other words, Anglo-Saxon sanctions, whether lifted by the aggressors or defeated by the targeted population on its own, have now become the measure for deciding future relations between future generations of Zimbabweans and the Anglo-Saxon countries. Sanctions have come to define who the Anglo-Saxons are and how Africans ought to deal with them in the future. These sanctions have always been about the future, but that picture became clear to the majority after February 13 2009 and especially during the white racist and vindictive efforts by Canada and the US to ban the Chiadzwa diamonds by manipulating NGOs, some Chiadzwa residents, the New York diamond merchants, Liberians and the entire Kimberley Process.
Now, readers of this column will have seen a letter by the current US ambassador to the editor of the Financial Gazette on June 3 2010 where he wrote to say:
“One can hardly go a day in Zimbabwe without the topic of sanctions creeping — no, barging — into the conversation. I have often remarked that this is a topic that I (Charles Ray) find little reason to dwell on, and usually avoid doing so. It is a non-issue that has lots of billowing smoke, but little flame. It is, however, such a pervasive topic, I feel I must at least attempt to offer some input . . .”
The random sample of stories listed in this instalment shows how hopeless US Ambassador Charles Ray’s efforts were at the start of June 2010. Ambassador Ray has since seen some light, according to The Herald of November 4 2010.
Perhaps the most spectacular sanctions stories which (potentially) demonstrate the point of this instalment are those to do with the threatened retrenchment of 4 000 employees of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and the purported restoration of the status of the RBZ as central banker and lender of last resort with a miserable allocation of US$7 million!
What reporters and editors should have done to help their readers understand the depth to which illegal sanctions took this economy was to cite the total value of the RBZ during its heyday during normal times. US$7 million is not enough to recapitalise one large mine or one capital-intensive farm!
The media reports on the US$7 million allocation to the RBZ were calculated to hide the fact that sanctions destroyed the national currency in 2008 and the minority benefiting from lack of liquidity does not want the RBZ to create a new Zimbabwe dollar in terms of its constitutional mandate
How is Zimbabwe expected to rebuild and restock an entire railway and road system, rehabilitate national water and sewerage, provide capital for housing and re-equip industry and a dozen national universities?
Illegal sanctions have indeed produced sanctioned minds which cannot see beyond mere rhetoric. Like the David and Goliath story, the sanctions story in Zimbabwe will not go away.
This is especially so because, unlike the Biblical Goliath, the Anglo-Saxon bully does not stand in one place. It insists on trying to pursue Zimbabwe everywhere, thereby making the story spectacular and available to the masses far beyond Zimbabwe’s borders.
The desperation of super-powers (and the thousands of NGOs they fund) over a small country of less than 14 million people is bound to make a juicy and lasting story.
That is why the publishers and editors of The Zimbabwe Independent, The Standard, The Sunday Times, The Zimbabwean and NewsDay — all seem to have reached the end of their wits, trying to find new angles from which the story of the illegal and racist Anglo-Saxon sanctions against Zimbabwe can be suppressed. And on October 4 2010 MPs from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC faction tried to force the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) to hide that its member companies have been ruined by the same illegal sanctions.
The sanctions-denying Press have gone as far as turning US embassy officials into regular columnists for their papers; they have targeted any and all effective Zimbabwean communicators of the anti-sanctions message for gratuitous defamatory attacks; and, most recently, their sponsors took the desperate step of hiring Liberian Deputy Minister Kpandel Fayia to write a false report on the basis of which it was hoped Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa diamonds could still be banned from the global market.
The problem faced by the Anglo-Saxon powers is a simple one: They have mobilised a gargantuan ideological, PR and propaganda machinery to deny the reality and impact of these illegal and racist sanctions on the people of Zimbabwe. The size, sophistication, direction and orchestrated activities of this machinery alone enable the people of Zimbabwe to appreciate the pervasive and intrusive manifestations of these sanctions throughout the society and throughout the world. Last week I showed how the impact of these illegal sanctions hits anyone who enters Kingstons bookstores in Harare with open eyes.
By trying to lynch Zimbabwe in every forum, through all channels and on every platform, the Anglo-Saxon powers have awakened the entire population of Zimbabwe to the evil intent of their sanctions. Citizens have seen Zimbabwe being pursued and pestered at the Commonwealth, at the IMF, at the World Bank, at Kimberley Process meetings, at the EU, at the UN — but each time Zimbabwe has overcome and exposed the aggressors both morally and legally.
The problem which the Anglo-Saxon powers and those they have paid to cover up their tracks now face can be seen by considering, for example, one story in The Daily News on Sunday for July 13 2003: “Cyclone Bush hits Africa”.
That article was written immediately after the MDC’s promised “mass uprising”, called “The Final Push”, to remove the Zimbabwe Government from power. The “Final Push” had just flopped in June. So by July 2003, “Cyclone Bush”, that is the US President George W. Bush and the machinery at his command, was supposed to complete the “Final Push” which the MDC had failed to pull off. The article gleefully celebrated all the fresh effects of illegal sanctions and financial warfare upon the people, but without any direct reference to the economic and financial nature of the same sanctions. The sanctions had to be put across in the media as if they were merely political restrictions on a handful of officials. Yet real financial and economic sanctions had actually been unveiled as part of an acute emergency in the foreign policies of the US, UK and EU toward Zimbabwe.
For example, all US declarations of the anti-Zimbabwe sanctions and their renewals are issued in the form of emergency decrees!
In the wake of George W. Bush’s visit to South Africa, MDC officials and supporting NGO leaders flocked to that country to try to meet the US president. The Daily News on Sunday told Zimbabweans in a celebratory fashion that:
“Zimbabwe has failed to print its own money, inflation is over 300 percent and unemployment is over 80 percent . . . The country is fast hurtling towards becoming a failed state like Liberia and Somalia.”
By November 2005, US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell realised that the impact of the Anglo-Saxon sanctions on the people had become difficult to blame on so-called “corruption and mismanagement”, partly because people could see the over-zealousness of the Anglo-Saxon powers themselves and those paid to cheer their assaults on the Zimbabwe economy. The idea of a “Cyclone Bush” hitting Africa and finishing off the Zimbabwean economy where the MDC’s rioting and stayaways had failed to deliver, a “final push” did not really sound like a convincing “mismanagement” story.
So, Ambassador Dell mounted a campaign which took him to Mutare, Bulawayo and Harare. Its purpose was to recognise the unprecedented nature of the devastation, telling students at Africa University that the livelihoods of the people of Zimbabwe had been brought back and down to the levels of 1953 and admitting that the sanctions law called the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act was indeed the “cornerstone” of US policy toward Zimbabwe; but it did not mean real economic sanctions. The idea was that the US could meet the people of Zimbabwe half-way by recognising their suffering and offering crocodile tears and some relief (chema ne nyaradzo) while diverting and directing their hostility toward the people’s own elected Government. This seemed to work until after March 2008.
Unfortunately for the Anglo-Saxon powers and their local supporters, the people began to piece together the parts of the puzzle and began to attack the illegal sanctions and call for their immediate lifting. It did not matter what the US and EU chose to call whatever it was they had imposed on any or all Zimbabweans: The devastation was everywhere and these white powers should simply prove to the people and their leaders that all forms of Anglo-Saxon interference in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs stopped. This is the clearest message from the just concluded COPAC outreach, and it has precipitated a panic. The Anglo-Saxon powers had thought that the relief economy and the people’s own partial victory over the illegal sanctions would quickly make the sanctions story stale, irrelevant and uninteresting.
The opposite is true: By refusing to lift the illegal and racist sanctions, the superpowers have put themselves in the shoes of Goliath! The Goliath story does not become stale, outdated or irrelevant. What is going to happen is that the little but blessed people of Zimbabwe will discover that five years after Christopher Dell’s overbearing lecture (saying that livelihoods had been brought down and back to 1953 but not because of sanctions) the sanctions story is everywhere. The people will discover, for instance, that each one of the following stories is, in fact, a sanctions story presented as something other than what it really is:
“Zim slips lower on (World Bank) business index”, Herald Business, November 5 2010; “Woo back lecturers in the Diaspora”, Chronicle, November 3 2010; “Zim airspace shock: Civil aviation authority admits obsolete equipment makes flying into the country dangerous”, Sunday Times, October 31 2010; “13 000 face UK deportation”, NewsDay, October 30 2010; “Sanctions not to blame-EU”, Zimbabwe Independent, October 29 2010; “Agriculture set to continue on recovery path”, Zimbabwe Independent, October 29 2010; “Addressing industry’s recovery needs”, Zimbabwe Independent, October 29 2010; “Those pieces of silver make a difference”, NewsDay, October 28 2010; “Extend multiple currency use (in place of own currency) — Bankers Association of Zimbabwe”, Zimbabwe Independent, October 22 2010; “Dire consequences of rural poverty”, The Standard, October 18 2010; “Farm workers suffer due to Zim land reform”, Sunday Times, October 10 2010; “End sanctions, Zuma tells EU”, The Herald, September 29 2010; “Copac violence dampens Zim, US re-engagement”, NewsDay, September 29 2010; “Zim’s economic upsurge falters”, Zimbabwe Independent, August 6 2010; “Government seeks US$2 billion for industry”, Herald Business, July 30 2010; “Economy misses production target (by nearly 50 percent)”, The Business Connect, May 3 2010; “Jaggers closes 11 branches”, Herald Business, April 19 2010; “Edgars closes 20 branches”, Herald Business, January 20 2010; “Zim (Trade) shipments fall 90 percent”, Sunday Mail Business, January 3 2010; “Annual shutdown (now) mere routine”, Herald Business, December 17 2009; and “No going back on job cuts, says Airzim chief”, Herald Business, November 9 2009.
The illegal sanctions story could have diminished in importance if the Anglo-Saxon powers had removed the sanctions immediately after the March 2008 elections or just at the time of the formation of the inclusive Government.
Some Zimbabweans would have concluded that the Anglo-Saxon powers just wanted to get their sponsored party, the MDC formations, into office and that they at least liked and respected the MDC formations while hating and seeking to insult and destroy the liberation movement in Zanu-PF.
By becoming even more vindictive and cynical after the formation of the inclusive Government, the Anglo-Saxon powers enlarged, deepened and entrenched the sanctions story for the following reasons:
l Continuing sanctions showed disregard for Sadc and AU diplomacy which produced and guaranteed the inter-party agreement which produced the inclusive Government.
Continuing the sanctions after February 13 2009 demonstrated to the whole population that those sponsoring the MDC formations had absolutely no respect for these parties which came to be seen more widely as mere tools to be used for a much wider, much deeper and continent-wide objective beyond the installation of the MDC formations.
l In other words, Anglo-Saxon sanctions, whether lifted by the aggressors or defeated by the targeted population on its own, have now become the measure for deciding future relations between future generations of Zimbabweans and the Anglo-Saxon countries. Sanctions have come to define who the Anglo-Saxons are and how Africans ought to deal with them in the future. These sanctions have always been about the future, but that picture became clear to the majority after February 13 2009 and especially during the white racist and vindictive efforts by Canada and the US to ban the Chiadzwa diamonds by manipulating NGOs, some Chiadzwa residents, the New York diamond merchants, Liberians and the entire Kimberley Process.
Now, readers of this column will have seen a letter by the current US ambassador to the editor of the Financial Gazette on June 3 2010 where he wrote to say:
“One can hardly go a day in Zimbabwe without the topic of sanctions creeping — no, barging — into the conversation. I have often remarked that this is a topic that I (Charles Ray) find little reason to dwell on, and usually avoid doing so. It is a non-issue that has lots of billowing smoke, but little flame. It is, however, such a pervasive topic, I feel I must at least attempt to offer some input . . .”
The random sample of stories listed in this instalment shows how hopeless US Ambassador Charles Ray’s efforts were at the start of June 2010. Ambassador Ray has since seen some light, according to The Herald of November 4 2010.
Perhaps the most spectacular sanctions stories which (potentially) demonstrate the point of this instalment are those to do with the threatened retrenchment of 4 000 employees of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and the purported restoration of the status of the RBZ as central banker and lender of last resort with a miserable allocation of US$7 million!
What reporters and editors should have done to help their readers understand the depth to which illegal sanctions took this economy was to cite the total value of the RBZ during its heyday during normal times. US$7 million is not enough to recapitalise one large mine or one capital-intensive farm!
The media reports on the US$7 million allocation to the RBZ were calculated to hide the fact that sanctions destroyed the national currency in 2008 and the minority benefiting from lack of liquidity does not want the RBZ to create a new Zimbabwe dollar in terms of its constitutional mandate
How is Zimbabwe expected to rebuild and restock an entire railway and road system, rehabilitate national water and sewerage, provide capital for housing and re-equip industry and a dozen national universities?
Illegal sanctions have indeed produced sanctioned minds which cannot see beyond mere rhetoric. Like the David and Goliath story, the sanctions story in Zimbabwe will not go away.
This is especially so because, unlike the Biblical Goliath, the Anglo-Saxon bully does not stand in one place. It insists on trying to pursue Zimbabwe everywhere, thereby making the story spectacular and available to the masses far beyond Zimbabwe’s borders.
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