The partial lifting of United States sanctions against Zimbabwe could be as a result of the fact that the Obama administration has finally come round to the realisation that this approach failed to induce the ‘regime change’ that they wanted.
It could also be because they now consider regime change in Syria a far more urgent proposition. There they want a grip on the politicians who run the oil industry in one of two or three countries that exploit that resource independently of American interests. Further, US control of Syrian oil would effectively isolate Iran whose oil they also want, if only to frustrate the development efforts of the Asiatic countries ÔÇô China and India ÔÇô who rely on the resource for their industrial growth.
The US employs the cynical argument of human rights abuse in these countries in order to justify their meddling.
Fiddling with the oil resource in Syria and Iran would also deprive those countries of the economic base that allows them then to keep big armies as a counter to Israeli monopoly of military influence in the Middle East.
The claim of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe is also put forward as a justification for institution of sanctions. Speaking on Press TV Friday morning, Reason (Vakarava) a Zimbabwean political scientist speaking from Australia, pointed out that all evidence suggests that the Americans had calculated that strangulation of the Zimbabwean economy would frustrate the Zimbabwean people, inciting them to rise against Mugabe.
The US and other western sponsored projects to oust Mugabe by pitting the people of Zimbabwe against Mugabe have failed. The priorities of US and British foreign policy lie elsewhere where the stakes are much higher.
In any case, the British and American machinations in the region might have impressed several of the former colonies, but not the South Africans, who empathised with their fellow sojourners in the military camps, despite belonging to the Soviet sponsored axis of the southern African liberation movements.
The South Africans, and Festus Mogae in Botswana, were mocked by the western oriented press in the region for their ‘quiet diplomacy’.
It was evident before South Africa became an active arbiter in the Zimbabwean situation, that the so-called ‘Frontline Sates’, who prefer to do their trade in Europe and America rather than in the region, failed to support Mugabe in his tussle with the British over their failure to live up to the undertaking at the Lancaster House negotiations.
The South Africans did not support Mugabe; most likely for fear that they were also failing to deliver land to their people in South Africa. The South Africans benefited from the stigmatisation of Mugabe’s frustrated efforts to live up to the core motive for the waging of ‘Chimurenga’; restoration of land to the Africans.
They could delay their resolution of this question in South Africa be also giving Zimbabwe as a bad example. But the South Africans, apart from their sentimental attachment to the South Africans on account of the ‘struggle’ experiences, know that a fully recovered Zimbabwe would be a worthy trading partner.
The South Africans also understood that resuscitation of Zimbabwean agriculture would relieve them of the burden of feeding the region and the continent on their own.
In short, The Southern African Development Community countries abandoned Mugabe from 1990 onwards when Zimbabwe woke up to the realisation that the British had no intention whatsoever of full fling the promises that Lord Carrington made at Lancaster, having preferred that the capitalist oriented Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU) of Joshua Nkomo should be the one to rule. Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union were unwanted for their socialistic persuasion which is well documented in the records of the national congresses of the organisation, and pre-independence literature of the organisation.
Mugabe had served in leadership positions at the Non-Aligned Movement, at the Commonwealth, the United Nations, SADCC and the Organisation of African Unity. Mugabe had made concessions allowing reserved parliamentary seats for unelected whites and others. He had appointed General Walls who led the Rhodesia army against the guerrillas, to head the army. He appointed a white man minister of agriculture.
Mugabe initiated the idea of ‘reconstruction and reconciliation’ in southern Africa.
What he did not tolerate was the storage of arms caches in Matabeleland that could have been used to dislodge the government, reversing the gains of over twenty years of a bush war to retrieve African land.
The unspoken story relates to the cultivation by the British of an environment of distrust, and even hate, between the Ndebele and Shona going back to Cecil John Rhodes’ exploits in the territory. In what he thought was a stroke of diplomatic genius, Lobengula ceded land populated by the Shona to Rhodes in exchange for an agreement that he and his people would be left alone. He also got a few guns and other presents.
Rhodes massacred the Shona with the assistance of the Ndebele, and came back later to evoke the deal he had made with Lobengula to then attack the Ndebele. The enmity between the Ndebele and British on the one hand, and the Shona on the other, persists to this day.
Ad so, not only did the British favour ZAPU in the belief that they were better custodians of Capitalist ideals, they also fancied them for their historical animosity towards the Shona. The image was created, that indeed the socialist inclined ZANU, was also an organisation of the Shona, if only because Mugabe is of that ethnicity.
Mugabe should have retired from the presidency at 1990 after ten years of service. But his main mission had not been served; the restoration of the land to the Africans and the realignment of the Zimbabwe economy to the new political reality, that national resource would no longer serve the interests of the minority community of whites, but all the people of Zimbabwe.
That the man did not leave after ten years is of academic value only. The fact is that he did not.
Rather than honour Lancaster, the western countries preferred sabotage of the Zimbabwe economy making it difficult for the government to maintain hospitals, schools, professionals and the civil service. The white farmers resolved to produce only for export .
The international press reported human rights abuses and election rigging spicing up the conversation with Mugabe’s declared lack of empathy for homosexuals.
The land issue, which was the reason for Zimbabweans to go to war was trivialised and represented in caricatures of Mugabe.
The conditions were right for the application of sanctions in the hope that the ZANU-PF government would fall to its knees.
Lifting of some of the sanctions, it seems, is aimed at ingratiating the opposition groups that have suddenly found reason to plead with the western powers that support then, to lift the sanctions against Zimbabwe.
Morgan Tsvengerai of the Movement for Democracy, has been heard pleading with the Australians to fie aid, arguing that Mugabe wants to retire a proud man with a healthy legacy. He has said that if he loses the next election, he will retire, Tsvengerai reports.
Zimbabwe’s economy is already on the ascendency. The partial lifting of sanctions may be designed to help the opposition, Tsvengerai in particular, to ride on the recent revival of the economy claiming that it was his campaign for help in the West that cured the country’s economic woes.
That way the Americans and the British will have bought themselves a permanent seat at State House should Tsvengerai win the next election.
