WHAT TRUE FRIENDS OF ZIMBABWE SHOULD DO
RECENT
media reports which suggest that Sweden offered to assist Zimbabwe’s
efforts towards re-engagement with the international community only if, President Emmerson Mnangagwa and MDC President Nelson Chamisa call a truce are
worrisome. They reveal Zimbabwe as a country to whom a different set of rules
are applied rather than a universal practice.
These conditions also reveal that there has been a failure to grasp the
reasons standing in the way of dialogue, which has largely to do
with the internal approach to issues and the huge egos at play in the country. One could even posit that the differences are irreconcilable yet very legitimate.
A case of mixed/double standards
When
I first heard of the news I thought this could be a great idea, but to place
this as a condition to supporting a troubled country to find its
feet is very unusual, patronising, and certainly not the way to deal with another sovereign state. Much as I
realise the need to get the
Zimbabwe domestic politics sorted out, I find
that there are rules
and conditionalities applied to
Zimbabwe that is not applied to other
countries. Questions like were these
conditions applied to Kenya when Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga had a disputed
election and the two were at each other’s throats? Have conditions been placed
on Yoweri Museveni in Uganda to first engage with Bobi Wine before support
could be rendered to the country? Even closer home has Cyril Ramaposa been asked to
first, engage with Julius Malema
in South Africa before support to South Africa can be extended?
A lot has been said about the rule of law and
human rights record being observed as conditions for normalisation of relations,
particularly in the case of Zimbabwe. This is all well and good, and I would
agree with that. I just have a problem
if the countries doing so do not apply the same rules and conditions in other
countries they operate in. We all know of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the veteran
Saudi journalist who Turkish officials say was killed in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.
The stories of Human Rights abuses in the Philippines have had the UN Human
Rights Group calls for a probe, with a staggering number of unlawful deaths and
police killings in the context of the so-called war on drugs, as well as
killings of human rights defenders. The record in Egypt has been no better,
with Mohamed Morsi, former President dying in June 2019 while under arrest. The
list is long. Yet the conditions being
waived on Zimbabwe are not waived on all these countries. I do not and will not condone even a single
rights abuse on anyone but it is the application of double standards becoming
the hallmark of global politics that is not right. The growing collapse of
multilateralism is partly to blame, especially under Trump's foreign policy.
However, outside the big powers to whom unilateralism seems to be the new way
of doing things, countries with a history of objectivity and fair play should
do better.
So why should Zimbabwe be treated differently?
It goes on to show how suspicious the world is towards Zanu PF, thanks to the
late Robert Mugabe for having been arrogant enough to earn the country the pariah state that has been for almost two decades. The threat
is no longer about withholding what is being done; it is about not imposing
anything, but rather retaining and maintaining what is already there. Talk of
another definition of political ransom.
Sanctions now a tired policy
Lest people forget. Zimbabwe has been ostracised since the time
of the farm invasions and the bungled land reforms of the early 2000s and has
been on US sanctions since 2002. Although these sanctions were supposedly
targeted at Mugabe and his cabal, the sad reality is, people at the grassroots
level are the ones bearing the brunt. The US extended those sanctions again by
one year in March 2019. But is it normal
to put a country on sanctions for more than two decades? The Americans tried it on Cuba for 50 years
and it failed. The Castro’s hung on, and
up to now, the country is still on its feet with the same regime the sanctions
intended to topple.
Timing
is everything, and true friends of Zimbabwe should be rethinking their
policies. Over the years, Zimbabwe has been its own voice against sanctions.
This time, there seems to be a growing continental outcry against sanctions on
Zimbabwe, as was seen by the declaration at the 39th SADC Heads of State Summit in Dar es Salaam in August 2019 where they
declared 25 October a day of action against sanctions on Zimbabwe. Incoming
SADC Chairman Magufuli called on AU to lobby for the lifting of those sanctions
and chances are this might be brought up at the UN General Assembly this month.
This is unprecedented. SADC, and soon the AU, will be making the sanctions
against Zimbabwe their issue, and no longer just a Zimbabwe problem. As
Magufuli was quoted saying, “This brotherly country, after all, has now opened a
new chapter and it is ready to engage with the rest of the world. It is, therefore, in the interest of all parties concerned, to see these sanctions
removed” You have controversial, but influential politicians like Julius Malema, who has come out openly criticizing sanctions and calling for their lifting.
Sanctions and global political ostracism have
at best been controversial, and at worst been counterproductive. Sometimes they
produce outcomes that are unintended and tend to defeat the original aims of
the sanctions themselves. According to BBC correspondent Jonathan Marcus, sanctions
tend to hurt the common man in the targeted countries rather than the political
elites. Professor of economics at University of Birmingham, Colin Rowat, wrote
that the longer sanctions last, the less successful they are likely to be.
Further, sanctions can galvanise national opinions against an existential
threat and unify the internal power
structures they are trying to weaken. This was true of Vladimir Putin, who
became more popular in Russia following the imposition of sanctions for invading
Crimea. The same outcome may be the by-
product of US sanctions against Iran over the ongoing tiff in the gulf. Indeed
it may explain the survival of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela as the military has
decided to stand by him against the existential threat from the USA. If you look at sanctions against Zimbabwe,
the witty Mugabe used them to cover for each and every single economic crisis that
visited the country on account of his own disastrous policies. Sanctions provided
that legitimate scapegoat.
The conditions attributed to the Swedish statement
also show that the opposition in Zimbabwe has been quite successful in portraying
the image that they are a relevant stakeholder in government. This is an
important victory for any opposition contesting for power.
Achilles heel for the opposition
At the same time when the opposition is being
made a condition for some kind of support to the country, this also falls into
the hands of the government when it accuses the opposition of doing the bidding
of some external forces. Again the case of the undesired consequences. Now that
the whole of Africa is calling for the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe,
it is difficult for anyone within the country, the opposition in particular to
be seen or heard calling for the retention of those sanctions ahead of the
March 2020 expiry of the current extension by
the USA.. Will another trip be made to Washington to again call for the
retention of sanctions at the ends of the one-year extension by those who made
the trip last time? That would be political
suicidal of the opposition to do, unless this is carried out nicodemously.
Sanctions are soon turning out to be the opposition’s Achilles heel.
Ideally, the Swedish proposition is a good
one, and I have always felt that the failure by Zanu PF and MDC to find each
other is a missed opportunity and an unnecessary cost to the progress Zimbabwe
would have and should have made if such rapprochements had been made. One needs to look at our neighbours in
Mozambique, where Frelimo and Renamo, who fought on opposite sides during the
liberation war, have sought accommodation and compromise. Mozambique’s has been the beneficiary in the sense that there is political stability, which brings certainty, the most
important ingredient for foreign investment. Or just look at Kenya, where the
famous handshake between Rail Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta in March 2018 has
changed the situation in Kenya and
effectively fumigated the political atmosphere that had been
contaminated by ethnically charged political contestation.
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