After all, thousands have died when the economy melted down. Thousands are still dying. The cost is not only an economic catastrophe but a human disaster as well.
These sanctions have been an unmanned drone causing so much untold suffering, killing in numbers and maiming in thousands. They are losing us a generation of Zimbabweans. The whole world knows it. They confess about it in their headlines. It is only the Zimbabwean denying this for political expedience.
When they declare that Europe has renewed sanctions on Zimbabwe for a year, it is not a mistake. They are neither suggesting that Robert Mugabe is Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe is Robert Mugabe.
They are just stating the obvious that sanctions on a Head of State is effectively sanctions on that State. The 28 countries represented in the European Union are not fools and vain enough to just go through a superfluous process every February if they felt their actions were not effective.
After all, Zanu-PF detractors say that sanctions are being used to justify a lot of government ills and shortcomings.
There is no honest person that would deny that things could be done differently.
There are a lot of structural changes that are needed, political will that is needed as well as a lot of transparency that is also needed. That is all true.
But also true is the fact that sanctions are damaging our economy in a bad way.
The stigma of sanctions makes the competence of any economic policy difficult, if not almost impossible, and this has been seen in Russia, Cuba and Iran, among other countries. It is a miracle or deft statecraft that the country is still standing.
It is tragic that the sanctions against Zimbabwe have been renewed for another year to be reviewed on February 20, 2016.
This is following their renewal on Friday the 20th of February 2015.
Are these dates fortuitous or calculated to dampen the President’s birthday celebrations the following day?
If there is a sinister reason behind the coinciding of these dates with his birthday?
If so, then judging by large turnout of Zimbabweans who celebrated the President’s birthday fronted by Zanu-PF UK on Saturday, Zimbabweans don’t buy it.
It surely is not going to stop the celebrations in Victoria Falls on Saturday either.
So if so many Zimbabweans, including those in England, are celebrating their President’s birthday, whose interests are these Western powers representing? We ask again. Whatever else people want to believe, it would not change the truth.
This is that as much as a drone kills more innocent than the desired target, the so-called smart sanctions are indiscriminate and not so smart after all.
In any case, why is this being done in the name of Zimbabweans? Which Zimbabweans now support these sanctions, bar a very small misguided minority?
Even those that called for them have realised that they cannot give them power.
Some of them are saying that they should go so that Zanu-PF doesn’t have any more excuses for failures. The rest of the Zimbabweans voted for the President. Their interests are served by this President. Sanctions only serve the interests of those that instituted them, and they should go.
The only way sanctions against Zimbabwe would have any legitimacy is when they are requested for by regional institutions such as Sadc and the AU and not for bilateral differences as happened between Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom over land.
Is the reader tired of hearing the sanctions arguments? Then by all means join the campaign against them so everyone and the country can move on!
Why They Hate Robert Mugabe – THEBLACKCHANNEL.NET
