Zimpapers Logo

The drive to have sanctions against Zimbabwe removed is gathering force with the United States House of Representatives at long last considering the problem and inviting the Political Actors Dialogue to make submissions.

South Africa is pressurising to have its northern neighbour released from the sanctions that have stymied regional growth.

The Polad intervention is doubly important. It is not just a Zimbabwean official intervention, but now includes a large bloc of opposition voices adding their weight and, in effect, pointing out that they need a prosperous country to fight their electoral battles in.

That degree of responsibility is both welcome and practical. So the intervention is both more effective with opposition support and makes the opposition Zimbabwean, rather than a group relying on foreign intervention.

An opposition party aiming to win a general election, and presumably that is the goal of all political parties, should want to win political power in a country where the economy is working and fight the battle for the voters’ support on who can make it work better and where the emphasis on growth should be applied.

That is a normal democratic goal and is common in all countries. In the United States itself, a lot of the political electoral process concentrates on the economy, with one party reckoning that less Government regulation and intervention, and thus lower taxes, will allow the private sector to expand faster and the other party, conceding that business must lead growth also noting that for sustainability there cannot be people left behind and the environment cannot be ruined for short-term gain.

But neither party wants the economy wrecked so they can achieve power.

That has not been the case in Zimbabwe where a section of the MDC parties has continually been seeking strong sanctions against Zimbabwe, not so much to reform electoral processes, something that has been tackled quite successfully in recent years, but to make it clear that only a Government drawn from that group can get sanctions lifted.

This has been a bad electoral strategy, saying in effect that sanctions hurt you, but we can get them lifted so they stop hurting you. For a start there is no guarantee that this particular section of the opposition can deliver, since the groups outside Zimbabwe might want a price paid that those parties could never pay. 

The trouble with sanctions is that once they are imposed, you have to rely on the imposers to lift them and winning an election in Zimbabwe does not give you control of the governments of other countries.

There is little doubt that the sanctions from the US and Europe were triggered by land reform and, although this cannot be stated in the modern world where gunboat diplomacy is now banned, designed to help get a change in Government. 

The rest of the reasons stated are largely window dressing.

We can agree that the land reform process was messier than it should have been, and that the compensation deals for improvements should have sorted out a lot earlier. 

We can also agree that some who benefited from land reform turned out to be bad farmers. But the Second Republic has been fixing this, with a deal with the commercial farmers who lost land and with businesslike audits and policies that are designed to reallocate land that has not been farmed to real farmers.

The Polad intervention also stressed, correctly, that the sanctions have created widespread poverty, or at least maintained people in poverty, and affected everyone. 

They were not targeted as defenders have tried to claim. If all they did was bar a few dozen prominent people from opening foreign bank accounts there would have been no economic  damage.

The main thrust and main effect of sanctions has been to bar Zimbabwe from accessing the normal development finance from international institutions, like the World Bank, and from the normal private sector financing for everything from the normal merchant banking and trade finance to letting banks help investment.

Even the targeting caused problems far beyond what was claimed, as ordinary banks were wary of Zimbabwean dealings in case a targeted person was somehow, however minor their role, involved and the cost of the checks they would have to make was far higher than any potential revenue.

Admittedly some of the fiscal irresponsibility of the First Republic would have made some access to foreign finance difficult, but that would have been our fault and is now being sorted out.

The Second Republic reforms have made financial deals possible, and without the financial sanctions things like payment plans and debt relief could be worked out. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been eager to help with technical support and advice, but cannot provide even a single dollar.

The European Union has largely lifted or suspended its sanctions regime, and recently went a lot further by allowing its European Investment Bank to provide modest financing to a Zimbabwean private sector bank for onward lending to companies hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. That was a signal to non-state banks that they could also resume normal relations.

Now the main problem is the US, with its huge block of votes in global finance institutions and its control of much of the world’s most important trading currency and resulting transactions through its banking system. 

This is why the willingness of the US House of Representatives, through a subcommittee, to review the effect of sanctions and take evidence with a clearer mind is so important. 

Both the US legislature and the executive are involved in the sanctions.

There is a law setting conditions, which have either been overtaken by events or have been met, but the executive also has power to suspend sections of that law. 

Legal changes are an involved process in most countries, and the US is no exception, but a clear recommendation from a legislative investigation would obviously carry a lot of weight when it comes to the positive need for the annual executive finding whether to continue the sanctions or suspend them. 

Now that Zimbabweans are largely speaking with one voice the opportunity exists for a positive outcome.