By Charles Motsi
If the boy could ignore all traditional African decorum and go after a dead man’s throne before he was even cold in the ground then lying must surely come as a second, if not first, language for Nelson Chamisa.
The nation was shocked this week when the youthful but not so wise Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader denied his hand in the calling of sanctions against the people of Zimbabwe on the South African Broadcasting Cooperation News (SABC) morning show.
Chamisa denied that he ever called for sanctions on Zimbabwe and went on to outrageously claim that the sanctions were not affecting the people he purported to stand for. Which was simply parroting the European Union (EU) and United States of America (USA)’s propaganda regarding their illegal economic restrictive measures on Zimbabwe.
This has become the norm for the MDC leader who has lied in public on how he met various world leaders only to be called out on his lies by the various leaders and their embassies. The boy-president lied that he had met Rwandan leader, Paul Kagame, and even went on to claim that he was instrumental in advising Kagame on his nation’s Information Communication Technologies (ICT) blueprint.
This lie was vehemently denied by Kagame, of course. So it came as no surprise that Chamisa would unashamedly lie on his personal involvement on calling for the sanctions that have plagued the nation for close to two decades now.
Chamisa has always bragged to anyone who cared to listen that he was part of the MDC since its inception and that he was in the decision making circles of the party since its genesis. So when the party’s founding father went on to boast that they lobbied for EU and the US to use sanctions to pressure Zanu PF it is only logical to assume that Chamisa was part of that decision.
Since the sanctions have been in existence for close to two decades now, for Chamisa to claim that he has never called for sanctions on Zimbabwe is simply trying to hid behind a finger but we all know that he was part of that disastrous and ill-conceived idea to once again place his fellow country man under the yoke of the oppressor.
Tsvangirai’s exact words on an interview with Associated Press (AP) were, “We have called for EU long time ago to impose targeted sanctions to have an effect on the behaviour of this Government.”
So, when in 2017 Chamisa and his team appeared before US Congress and begged them to “Maintain existing US policy toward Zimbabwe” he was well aware that his party still needed sanctions from their sponsors to choke Zanu PF out of power. A policy that has had the same failed result for twenty years of course.
This ends the debate on who called for the sanctions, it was the MDC and as long as he (Chamisa) is president he is responsible for his party’s decision.
To debunk the EU/US propaganda that sanctions are targeted and have no effect on the masses of Zimbabwe, one only needs to look at the various financial institutions that serve the vast majority of Zimbabweans who have been fined for going against EU/US sanctions.
Standard Chartered Zimbabwe was fined US$18m after its United Kingdom headquartered parent company was hit with a US$1bn fine for violating US sanctions against Zimbabwe. CBZ Bank was again slapped with a whooping US$3,8 billion fine by the United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) for financial transactions done on behalf of ZB Bank which is under economic sanctions imposed by the US.
If this is not proof of how these bullies (EU/US) have strangled the Zim economy then I do not know what is. So Mr Chamisa going around Africa and lying through your teeth will not make us forget the simple truth that it is you who called for sanctions and the one benefiting most from them while the people of Zimbabwe suffer.
