By Chipo Mutasa
Imagine a sanctions-free Zimbabwe! Imagine it.
Zimbabwe’s tarred roads have become every driver’s menace. There are targeted sanctions against certain individuals and a few corporates, so says the authors of these sanctions. In a 50km stretch of urban tarmac roads, not less than 10 vehicles suffer depreciated suspension and shock absorption mechanisms every day.
According to the city of Harare, the city has a 4000km road network plied by 800 000 cars daily. Assuming that each car travels an average 40 km daily, this would translate to a staggering 32 million kilometres daily. This is quite a distance! In this combined travelled road, a significant number of vehicles lose their roadworthiness due to the bad roads.
Eventually, the common man who is said not to be targeted by the said sanctions has to deep his pocket to repair his damaged vehicle. Assuming that 10 percent of the vehicles require replacement of damaged suspension, this would translate to a staggering 80 000 vehicles! Servicing and repairing 80 000 vehicles requires a fortune. This fortune is coming from poor and innocent citizens who have not taken anything away from America.
And, the hospitals do not have essential medicines. This information is in the public domain. The country’s traditional suppliers have been scared off by the sanctions bulwarks. This has resulted in the death of ordinary citizens, the ones not targeted by the sanctions!
Families can no longer afford to send their children to school. The reason being the unaffordability of fees, uniforms and books. Behind this lack of affording is unemployment that is at its all-time highs. Industry is failing to absorb the available workers because there is under-investment. Zimbabwe is suffering capital flight, courtesy of the sanctions. As a result, there are more employees than there are employers willing and able to employ. This has diminished the worker’s bargaining power based on the law of demand and supply. The casualty out of this struggle is the worker who gets underpaid, affecting the quality of life for his family. This man is said to be un-targeted by the sanctions.
Banks are important actors in national economics through vending for loans from off-shore funders. These off-shore funders are restrained from doing business with Zimbabwe by the proprietors of these sanctions. A skilled college leaver intending to borrow to establish a business to employ himself and a few other workers fails to find a willing and able bank to fund him. This school leaver is ‘not’ targeted by the sanctions, neither are the potential workers he was meant to employ in the event of a loan availability.
And, it is fact that Government-owned ZB Bank has been prevented from accessing offshore funding by American sanctions. Also, Barclays Bank has been fined US$298 million for busting sanctions relating to transactions destined to Iraq, Cuba, Burma and Libya, countries under American sanctions. How would such an institution that has lost quarter a million dollars not fear to cooperate with a country that is sanctioned by the most powerful country under the sun? Once beaten twice shy.
The entertainment industry, like every other industry, is underpaying potential celebrities, driving them into oblivion. These would-be celebrities are ‘not’ targeted by the sanctions! So, what crap is this that the sanctions are targeting only a bus-full of politicians and a handful companies? We used to have our own flagship soap opera in this country, Studio 263. This opera, which premiered coincidentally at the time America slapped the country with sanctions died from sponsor apathy, less than a decade later.
Without these sanctions, Zimbabwe would be having its own 17 year old soapie (and many others!); it would be having its own currency. Zimbabweans would not be customers of the xenophobia down south had this country been spared the devilish sanctions from America. America is abusing its powers, powers that are usurped from smaller nations in many ways. Today the United Nations has been reduced to a mere lapdog of the USA so it turns a blind eye to the excesses of this self-ordained global bully. Since 2002, the UN has not lifted a finger against this trespass on international law by the host-in-chief of the 193-member state strong UN. If the UN cannot protect member states against abuse by a fellow member, it ceases to be useful to its purpose.
Zimbabwe has the potential to slap the US with every form of sanction there is, but for the civility of it, it has chosen not to take that route but to arrange a gentleman’s way of resolving this crime. But alas, Zimbabwe’s gentlemanliness and civility is viewed as weakness by the US.
A world lacking mutual respect among and between countries is not ripe for global peace and sustainable development, matters the UN claims to put at the core of its heart. How can Zimbabwe meet the Sustainable Development Goals when it is albatross-ed by punitive trade embargoes? America’s big brother attitude on the global stage does not help international harmony. The time is nigh to stop America in its tracks. No human race deserves to be mistreated as a means of supplementing the happiness of another.
Imagine a Zimbabwe without sanctions. Imagine a Zimbabwe with economic prosperity, social and political justice and a happy people. America, please save us the sanctions.
