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Naboth Paurosi Dzivaguru Correspondent

The admission by the United States last week that sanctions alone will not force a regime change agenda in Zimbabwe has exposed the West’s hypocrisy and lies, while also confirming its meddling in other sovereign nation states’ governance.

The United States Assistant Secretary Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, Robert Destro, admitted that the US had used sanctions to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy to force the Zimbabwean government to “end human rights abuses” and urged mass action to remove the Zanu PF-led administration.

Speaking to journalists from Washington via teleconferencing, Destro is quoted as saying that “ sanctioning is not enough . . . our job is to call the situation as we see it.”

Previously, the US had said the sanctions were restrictive measures on certain individuals and influential people accused of human rights abuses in the country.

The world super power had also denied that sanctions were affecting the common man, despite isolating and cutting Zimbabwe off external financial support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and global markets.

The new additions on restrictive measures by the US department of the treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) include State Security Minister Owen Ncube and Ambassador to Tanzania Nhamo Sanyatwe.

Jim Risch, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Chris Coons, a member of the sub-committee on Africa and Global Health Policy, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to convince the US department of the treasury to update the list of people on sanctions in Zimbabwe.

“Given the developments in Zimbabwe over the last two years, we urge you to consider enhancing the tools at your disposal, including the use of targeted sanctions, to incentive changes in behaviour by the government of Zimbabwe,” the two senators wrote.

Seeing that the strategy had failed to work in Zimbabwe over the past decade when sanctions where imposed on the southern African country, the US has now gone a gear up to cause strife and chaos in the country in their bid to push illegal regime change agenda.

Chester Crocker (the former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs) had this to say during US senate hearing on Zimbabwe  in 2000 ahead of the passing of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA) into law.

“To separate the Zimbabwean people from Zanu PF, we are going to have to make their economy scream, and I hope you, senators, have the stomach for what you have to do. So, if we were to decide to try and work for change in power in Zimbabwe, I would hope that we would have the wisdom to be discrete to be low-key and to avoid giving those in power there the excuse that foreigners are out to set them” (Chester Crocker, 106th Congress House Hearings-Zimbabwe Democracy on the line-Tuesday, June 13, 2000).

The economic assassination strategy was also used against Chile in the 1970s after Salvador Allende’s unyielding policy of nationalising the country`s major industries, much to the disapproval of US government, when then US President Richard Nixon told the CIA to ‘make Chilean economy scream’.

The US consistently worked to undermine the Chilean economy until General Augusto Pinochet replaced Allende in a military coup in 1973.

This is the same strategy that is now being used on Zimbabwe’s new dispensation under the able leadership of President Mnangagwa, who has turned out to be a reformist unlike his predecessor the late Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

The determination of human rights abuses alleged on Zimbabwean authorities is not based on material facts and law, but merely on allegations, conjecture and or remote possibility.

Zimbabwe enjoys judicial independence since inception of the new Dispensation.

A recent case is of Job Sikhala who escaped the treason charge, as the court was free to make its decision without undue interference which is the norm in the new dispensation.

We have also witnessed protection of human rights, property rights, civil liberties and equal access to justice.

This is the reality that the US should see and which was quickly seen by the European Union and Commonwealth blocs.

Jurisprudential wisdom through legal realism and legal reasoning counsels that a mandate cannot reform itself out of power.

With this economic landscape engendered by sanctions, politics is in favour of opposition parties. This is a grand rigging by the West through arm-twisting and arm-breaking of the Zimbabwean economy.

The STRUGGLE Continues until the last drops of blood, sweat & tears!!!

Naboth Paurosi Dzivaguru is a holder of LlB hons, Bsc hons in Political Science and MSc in International Relations.