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Colin Madziva
Correspondent

According to the United States Department of State (2022) the nexus of the sanctions were undemocratic practices, human rights abuses, corruption and economic mismanagement.

Overtly, and in the public domain, the sanctions are punishment for the deemed transgressions.

Yet, covertly a more sinister and nefarious political agenda is the raison d etre for their imposition.

The concealed strategy is the infusion of civil discontentment and dissatisfaction which is hoped to show at the polls and ultimately cause regime change.

Recently, history has recorded that the Donald Trump 2016-2021 presidency and “white nationalist/supremacist” rhetoric that has consumed most of Europe in the last decade culminating in the January 6, 2021 insurrection on Capitol Hill which was witnessed live globally, exposes some of the two-faced behaviour pervading the so-called “free world or civilised world” regarding race relations, equality, democracy, universal freedoms and pretended altruism.

It is indeed hilarious that yesteryear purveyors of terrorism, thievery and genocide, whose current economies continue to derive excessive mileage from their previous and current heinous misdeeds, would have “us” believe they are champions of democracy and justice.

It is an open secret that any country dominated by a mishmash of nationalities with minimal or non-existent political and economic participation by the indigenous populations such as Australia and the US are creations from terror, hatred, subjugation and genocide.

To understand these nations in less terms is nothing short of misapplication, misinterpretation and selective understanding of international law.

How is it that the French who arrived in much of Africa uninvited, wielding and exacting such terror on the indigenous Africans would have the audacity to impose colonial taxes on contemporary economies once the victims demanded their liberation from decades of bondage?

Yet the same France responsible for such rapine injustice regards itself as a champion of modernity, civilisation, justice and democracy.

Are we to remain unaffected by the injustice and inhumanity pervading the French society and much of Francophone Africa today?

Let us call a spade a spade by calling the French out for being present day perpetrators of inhumanity, terrorism and genocide.

And they are not alone.

The Germans in Namibia, the Belgians in the Congo where generations of Africans had their limbs hacked off in the name of King Leopold, the Rwanda genocide, the Mau-Mau uprisings in Kenya, the Palestinian situation, and the list goes on.

It is unconscionable that one group of people/race thinks itself superior to others to the extent of policing and corralling the rest of the world to conform to their culture and mischievous machinations.

Such blasphemous big brother mentality is typical of colonial and neo-colonial history that is littered with fake equality deliberately designed to make other nations bow and assimilate western culture and all its demented values.

History will indicate that sanctions are a tool used by the powerful to consolidate domination over others.

Whether that power is real or imagined depends on which side of the fence one is standing on in similar fashion to the use of the term “terrorist” which Western sensationalism has re-assigned to mean any opposing philosophical orientation.

In my definition, a “terrorist” is anyone arriving uninvited in my environment to assume or impose superiority.

Unfortunately, there is more than a hint of that when one group of people or countries assume that they can impose sanctions on others/another to force conformance.

Sanctions by their very design are supposed to weaken or injure the economy of the target nation. Simply, they are in fact bully-boy tactics to punish in order to control.

Such phenomena cannot be ignored towards correcting any historical injustices and the issue of sanctions against Zimbabwe.

It is critical in all instances to revert and refer to the Lancaster House agreement between the Patriotic Front, the Rhodesian delegation, the British Government and other Western donors which brought a cessation to the war and the subsequent independent nation of Zimbabwe.

Questions should be answered about the provisions of that agreement especially the financial commitments made by the West and why it was necessary at all to protect white interests in the form of guaranteed parliamentary representation and land rights before any premature excitement about sanctions.

Compromising any arm of the State cannot be considered a lone and isolated act ending by affecting the particular target, but has far reaching consequences across the entire economy.

The concepts of sovereignty and territoriality ought to be respected and applied unequivocally universally without covert machinations towards suzerainty.

Governments play critical roles universally in providing conducive legal and regulatory frameworks towards political, economic and social stability in their jurisdictions.

Consequently, all governments have in place enforcement mechanisms that ensure effective checks and balances towards the national cause.

State power is derailed when powerful parallel structures that compete with the ruling class establish themselves within any territory.

Hence sanctions should not therefore be seen as anything else aside from a powerful parallel structure competing against the ruling party.

Many will view this writing as an angry retort to power or as that of an apologist ruling party functionary against deemed Western enemies.

If the truth be told, common sense is not so common among many today who are often fed lies from Western sensationalist media outlets with such intensified feverish zeal that basic reasoning has been relegated to a secondary function.

To be Zimbabwean does not mean allegiance to a political party, ideology and love of country (patriotism).

Rather it encompasses ability to discern the national agenda away from politics, politicking, party manifestos and political power.

Nationalism requires supreme loyalty to the nation and placement of national welfare beyond all other forms of individual political or social loyalties.

It is the traceability of individuals to a community beyond family, clan or tribe by birth, tradition, practices, beliefs (culture) and/or inheritable attributes.

Therefore, one does not need to be a party functionary to understand the perilous and deleterious nature of disfigured foreign policy, power and influence such as illegal sanctions on their country especially where human rights are concerned.

To be human is not a function of one’s outward appearance or colour profile. Rather it is to possess that primate genome that traces us all to the original man who rose out of the dry African savannah thousands of years ago to populate the rest of the world as we know it today.

Human rights belong to us all. The illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe must be removed unconditionally.

Colin Madziva is a business graduate and local business person. This is a continuation of his article whose first part was published in The Herald yesterday.