EDITORIAL COMMENT : Fare thee well, Mr Obama, you won’t be missed Barack Obama
Barack Obama

Barack Obama

The United States of America has just extended its sanctions against Zimbabwe, with the outgoing President Barack Obama last week bidding us as hostile a goodbye as ever.

Not that we are particularly shocked, or saddened by this development.

Zimbabwe has been under illegal US sanctions since 2001 and the renewable Executive Order granting the US president powers to deal with “threats” and “national emergency” has been with us since 2003.

In fact, there have been a number of such Executive Orders in the interim to strengthen the illegal sanctions regime against Zimbabwe.

The US accuses Zimbabwe of “posing an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”

We have written extensively about US and Western sanctions and have pointed out how they have contributed to the majority of the economic, social and political problems in Zimbabwe within the framework of a hostile foreign policy which particularly manifested at the turn of the millenium as the US bought into a historical bilateral tiff between Zimbabwe and Britain.

It will be recalled that when Zimbabwe embarked on the land reform programme to correct colonial injustices that saw 6 000 whites owning upwards of three quarters of all arable land in the country, Britain — then under Tony Blair — was unhappy.

The white farmers not only represented a colonial legacy of a fading imperial power: they also were economic actors feeding Britain off the fat of our land. Reclaiming land was more than just a matter of transferring assets.

It was also a story of decolonisation, which was rich in significance and emotion at a time when other former colonies were grappling with land tenure issues hanging over from the past.

Zimbabwe would set a bad precedent.

British anger at this, even when it was largely to blame for the untenable situation that eventually defined the land question, was understandable.

It is also how it exported the issue to be a Western cause célèbre, foisting its hostility even on unwilling members of the European Union.

Yet the US, under one George W. Bush, over-zealously took the matter up legislating its hostility under the name Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act signed on December 21.

Obama, understood to have sponsored the law as a Bill, inherited Washington’s hostile stance and maintained it through and through.

The Americans want us to believe that the sanctions regime is about promoting human rights, democracy, rule of law and whatever neoliberal jazz. We know better.

The sanctions were designed to cause suffering among Zimbabweans — even to the point of humanitarian catastrophe such as the 2008 cholera pandemic — so that people would rebel against and overthrow President Mugabe and his Government.

Seen from that perspective, the US has been seeking regime change since at least 2001 to date and Barack Obama’s extension of sanctions is the same old wish.

Luckily, Zimbabwe has not buckled, for all the damage that the sanctions and other hostile actions, declared and undeclared, have wrought.

Happily, the heroic and resilient people of Zimbabwe have not given evil Obama — and evil Bush before him — the pleasure of illegal regime change.

Critically, we note that in his last few days Obama has been bidding these unhappy goodbyes, seeking to leave his diplomatic imprint all over and in apparent attempt to spoil it for his successor, Mr Donald Trump who assumes office in three days’ time.

The case of Russia, for example, is telling.

Mr Trump has indicated that he wishes to normalise relations with Russia, but the outgoing regime of Obama has tried by all means to throw spanners into the works using all manner of tricks from lies and subterfuge to imposing sanctions.

The incoming US president has also indicated that he will cut down on meddling in other people’s affairs.

It would seem that has not pleased Obama and co any bit.

While we are not sure what the Trump administration has to offer to the world and indeed Zimbabwe, which we will get to know after January 20, we are more than happy to see the back of this little fellow who distinguished himself as some kind of popstar.

Even in Africa, the fatherland that largely cheered when Obama first entered the White House, there will not be much tears as he did pretty little to merit any lingering memories.

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