21 July 2012 By Reason Wafawarova It is very important that we look at how the media
have handled the issue of the EU/US illegally imposed
economic sanctions on Zimbabwe in the last decade. By the media it may be necessary to broaden the
term to include all commentary, analysis, opinion and
the generality of the intellectual fraternity. For
many who have read about the EU sanctions in
particular, the impression ones gets is that the
sanctions on Zimbabwe are not only limited to the
punishment of a few rogue politicians but also
justifiably imposed on the basis of alleged human
rights abuses. That is the prevailing rhetoric that
largely passes for fact in the public domain. Welshman Ncube agrees that it was him and some of
the leadership in the original MDC who advocated and
supported for the imposition of sanctions on Zimbabwe,
but he insists that their request was only limited to
the punishment and isolation of their individual
political opponents within Zanu-PF, whom they accused
of alleged human rights abuses. He says he is opposed
to the inclusion of companies and other business
entities to the sanctions regime, arguing that the
position of the MDC has never been to advocate for
economic sanctions against the people of Zimbabwe. This is despite the fact that Morgan Tsvangirai has
always openly supported the inclusion of companies and
businesses in the sanctions regime, even making public
warnings that the people would suffer for real if they
did not help him remove Zanu-PF and President Robert
Mugabe from power. The utterances are on public record
in Zimbabwe and not even one of them has been
rescinded once. We must start by making some factual observations
about the issue of these sanctions. The official basis
for the illegal economic sanctions by both the US and
the EU has been that the embargo is a punitive measure
to force an end to systematic human rights abuses. The
reality of course is that the sanctions were in a
large part a gesture of protest against the forceful
reclamation of land from colonially settled white
commercial farmers, and in another sense a way of
creating political leverage for the puppet MDC over
their rivals in Zanu-PF. The part that includes human rights for ordinary
Zimbabweans is nothing more than an impressive truism
to that is meant to put a human face to an otherwise
racist power game. Tony Blair, George W. Bush and John Howard made up
the aggressive triumvirate whose rhetoric was
impressively megaphoned into impressive news bytes by
a compliant media as well as into impressive
commentary by equally compliant sections of the
Western intellectual community. The foreign policy of these Western powers became a
matter of fighting the "egregious human rights abuses"
by Robert Mugabe, to quote John Howard of Australia.
His Foreign Minister Alexander Downer repeatedly
declared Australia's support "for the people of
Zimbabwe," a euphemism he favoured so much in
reference to the puppet MDC leadership. Downer even went as far as hunting down Zimbabwean
students studying in Australian universities, and
suspected of being connected to Zanu-PF politicians or
officials in President Robert Mugabe's Government.
Those who were suspected of any relations to Zanu-PF
elites were summarily expelled from both the
Australian universities and also from the country
itself in 2007, purely on the basis of being related
to politicians whose opinions differed with those of
Downer and his political colleagues. That blatant
abuse of the rights of these individuals was meant to
be a correction of alleged human rights abuses in
Zimbabwe. It cannot be more ironic. This writer was extensively debated in the Senate
after Senator Natasha Stott Despoja moved a motion for
deportation on the basis of pure fabrications of
charges of "rape, murder, and training mass killing
militias." The "reliable" source of information in
this case was a slanderous radio report defamatorily
created by the imagination of one ABC reporter by the
name Wendy Carlisle — a package of total concoctions
and sensationalised fabrications, coloured by
ludicrous utterances from Job Sikhala. The rhetoric about correcting human rights abuses
in Zimbabwe is quite similar to that on the "war on
terror," once described as the "evil scourge of
terrorism" by the late Ronald Reagan, and also
described by George Schultz as a plague spread by
"depraved opponents of civilisation itself". Reagan's rhetoric made headline news in Western
media in 1985 just like the Bush/Blair/Howard rhetoric
placed Zimbabwe on the media spotlight at the peak of
land reclamation in Zimbabwe in 2000. There is a striking continuity on the players
involved with the illegal sanctions regime in
Zimbabwe. Today there is talk about a possible lifting
of these illegal sanctions whose imposition was
clearly outside the mandated authority of the United
Nations. The United Kingdom played a leading role in
the imposition of the sanctions after the 2000 and
2002 elections in Zimbabwe, more for punishing Zanu-PF
for its performance and far less for the allegation of
human rights abuses. Today the UK continues to play a
huge role in advocating for the perpetuation of these
illegal sanctions, declaring that it would be
"unacceptable" for President Robert Mugabe to be
allowed to "shake hands with the Queen," as if that
gesture in itself was a feat of global political
significance. To Zimbabweans the lady is nothing more
than an ordinary old woman enjoying mythical
over-glorification from sections of the British
population. The continued role played by the UK does not only
confirm that the illegal sanctions regime is all but
an internationalised bilateral conflict between London
and Harare, but also shows the United Kingdom's
obsession with seeking a domineering role in the
affairs of its former colonies. The power element must not be ignored in this
debate about sanctions. The sanctions imposed on
Zimbabwe are about trying to get rid of a perceived
cancer that could spread dangerously across the
Southern African region, especially into South Africa.
As officially stated by the US State Department and as
repeated by Barack Obama in his maiden speech,
Zimbabwe is seen to be posing "the unusual and
extraordinary threat to the national interest and
foreign policy of the United States". Those who have been negotiating for the lifting of
the illegal economic sanctions may need to be reminded
of the words of George Schultz on April 14 1986. He
said, "Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation
if the shadow of power is not cast across the
bargaining table." The US and the EU will only take negotiations about
lifting sanctions on Zimbabwe seriously if and only if
such negotiations cast the shadow of Western power
across the bargaining table. This is why the UK is
putting patronising conditionalities as a prerequisite
for the lifting of the sanctions. Schultz even condemned those "who seek utopian
legalistic means like outside mediation, the United
Nations, and the world court while ignoring the power
element of the equation". Equally, those who have made legalistic utterances
about the illegality of the economic sanctions against
Zimbabwe have been emphatically ignored by the EU and
the US. Even the UN's Navy Pillay has been dismissed
for failing to realise the element of power in the
sanctions equation on Zimbabwe. The only Zimbabwean person who seems to openly
revere the power element in the sanctions regime is
Morgan Tsvangirai, who until recently was in so much
denial that his tongue could not even utter the word
sanctions — jumping from one silly euphemism to the
next, like "restrictive measures," or "travel bans."
Morgan Tsvangirai is quite clear of the power element
in the sanctions regime, and he cherishes this element
for its prospect of making him the supreme beneficiary
— given the man's conviction that there is no other
puppet in Zimbabwe that impresses Western powers more
than he does. Even internal rival Tendai Biti publicly
concurs with that. Simply put, Morgan Tsvangirai
remains the most hopeful trump card in the West's
power game to dislodge Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. What the West has been doing in Zimbabwe is to
exercise the power element by sponsoring mercenary
civic forces in the country, under the direction and
supervision of Western diplomats and other
organisations like the National Endowment for
Democracy, DFID or the US Aid. For as long as Zimbabwe pursues pro-people policies
like land reclamation and the current economic
empowerment policies, it will remain a preoccupation
for Western powers to block any pursuit of such
policies, viewed as cancerous and a very bad example
to neighbouring countries. What we have right now is the hawk/dove debate in
the West. The hawks are those sharing the position of
the UK that the illegal economic sanctions must be
maintained and intensified regardless of the harm to
the ordinary Zimbabweans because, to them, there are
higher Western priorities than Zimbabwean lives. These
priorities are, of course, the economic interests of
the UK, interests in the minerals of Zimbabwe as well
as in other economic sectors like banking and so on. The doves argue that the illegal sanctions have
failed the test as a weapon to remove or weaken Zanu-PF
and its leader President Robert Mugabe. They argue
that alternative methods need to be adopted, including
buying off Zanu-PF officials or bribing them by
conditionally lifting the sanctions. The human rights mantra will have to continue in
order to maintain an international appeal to the cause
of sanctions, and to provide good politics on the part
of the Western-funded Movement for Democratic Change,
whose only strength seems to be in vilifying and
incriminating their political opponents in Zanu-PF. Those in Zanu-PF who believe that the economic
sanctions will be removed simply on the basis of
holding an electoral referendum in a manner deemed to
be free and fair by the West must rethink that
position because, in essence, that logic is not only
patronising but also clearly insincere. If Zanu-PF misses the power element in the politics
of sanctions, then there is a real danger of the party
blindly capitulating into Western-engineered oblivion.
What Zanu-PF must do, as matter of strategy, is to
make sure that they play the power game effectively to
their advantage. It is the West that is after Zimbabwe's natural
resources and not vice versa. Zanu-PF must befriend
non-Western investors so as to render Western
isolation useless. Zanu-PF must stop making pleas for
the lifting of sanctions, and start pushing hard
towards radical positions in economic development
without the Western input. Simply put, Zanu-PF must
make the life of the Western investor harder the very
way the life of an ordinary Zimbabwean has been made
harder by the Western sanctions. Where Zimbabweans are
predicted to stone their leadership, let the Western
investors attack their politicians back home for lost
opportunities. The hawks in the West must realise the futility of
the illegal economic sanctions and they must be forced
into seeking concessions with Zimbabwe as opposed to
continue with the bullish arm-twisting games we are
seeing today. Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome.
It is homeland or death!! Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in
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