Editorial Comment – Sanctions: Spare us crocodile tears Mr Envoy!

At face value, it is easy to applaud US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Thomas Harry Junior I for “admitting” that sanctions that his country imposed on Zimbabwe have “the unintended consequences to the ordinary people out there”.

The envoy, America’s latest diplomatic export to Zimbabwe, fielded questions on the subject at a discussion in Harare.

We quoted him as saying: “We review sanctions every time and they do not affect start-up companies but Government entities and parastatals. Therefore, anyone can still do business with us. However, we have not carried out a study to ascertain the effects of the sanctions, but we have to try to sort out the unintended consequences of sanctions to the ordinary people out there.”

To the uninitiated, the temptation is to celebrate his admission that sanctions hurt the ordinary people — which is fine but gravely simplistic.

The fact of the matter is that America knew from the outset that sanctions were going to hurt ordinary people and that is why Chester Crocker talked about making the economy “scream” as a way to separate President Mugabe from the people.

In simple terms, sanctions were meant to be a blunt instrument to bludgeon the people of Zimbabwe into submission through the incapacitation of the Government.

And we all know how since the imposition of sanctions Government has been constrained to deliver key social services such as education that almost went under as teachers shunned their work and thousands left the country for greener pastures.

At the height of the economic onslaught wrought by sanctions, teachers only went to work for a number of days one can count on their fingers.

The same sad situation obtained in the health sector where cholera claimed close to 4 000 people as health delivery buckled from lack of medicines and staff so much so that a preventable disease like cholera wreaked havoc in the country.

All crucial Government departments, from electricity to the country’s land bank had been placed under sanctions, including some of their managers who could not play their key economic roles.

Everywhere you turned, things were bad; shortages of basic goods, shortage of cash, shortage of fuel and a galloping, record-breaking hyperinflation. Zimbabwe was fast descending into a humanitarian disaster. This could not merely be the “unintended” consequences, surely?

As a matter of fact, this was the intended effect and design of the sanctions — to foment a humanitarian disaster pursuant to regime change.

We cannot be lost to such a basic fact of history.

Then we have numerous cases that we can point to the US Ambassador as part of the deliberate and cold-calculated squeezing of Zimbabwe.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has been intercepting money belonging to individuals and companies over the years. In 2013 the Industrial Development Corporation reportedly lost over $20 million to the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, while a Zimbabwean resident in Botswana had his $1 000 frozen.

The Zimbabwe Fertiliser Company, one of the IDC subsidiaries, still has $5 million frozen to date as the US applies its sanctions regime.

The Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe also lost over $30 million in revenue to OFAC. The West’s illegal sanctions regime is estimated to have cost Zimbabwe $42 billion in lost revenue over the past 13 years shrinking the economy by over 40 percent with deleterious effects on livelihoods and jobs.

Fifteen IDC subsidiaries had not been able to do any telegraphic transactions with any international finance institution either to pay for raw materials or any other transactions.

Olivine, another subsidiary of IDC, lost a $2 million loan it had secured from the PTA Bank to capitalise. The sanctions not only target potential imports and exports, but other institutions which assist the IDCZ. The Treasury Department fined Barclay’s Bank PLC $2,5 million for “violating” the sanctions against IDCZ.

The cases are just too many to state here.

Armed with this knowledge, we dare the US to remove its evil sanctions against Zimbabwe if we are to believe that it cares for the people of Zimbabwe. The sanctions are so patently political, harsh and a direct attack on the people of Zimbabwe and not just “unintended consequences”.

If Mr Thomas Harry Jnr I wants respect from us he should stop this obfuscation and engage Harare towards normalisation of relations which will be anchored on the unconditional removal of the odious sanctions regime.

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