Zimbabwe’s
government has declared 25 October a national holiday. The country will come to
a standstill. Schools are to be closed and the government has ordered head
teachers to bus students to specified venues to attend ceremonies for a day
against sanctions.
The origin of this bizarre extravaganza,
endorsed by the Southern African Development Community, is to use the day to
campaign for the removal of sanctions against Zimbabwe.
It is accompanied by a distasteful splurge of
public resources – some say over US$4m – including on a football match and
music gala. This is at a time of power blackouts for days, shortages of fuel,
banknotes, medicines and other basic needs. Inflation has shot up in the past
three months. In June, the government banned the use of foreign currency,
deepening the hardship but proclaiming the return of a robust national
currency.
That hasn’t happened. Instead, politically connected elites get US dollars from the
reserve bank and sell them at a profit on the parallel market, pushing down the
value of the revived national currency or “bond dollar”. It currently trades at
US$1=Zim$20.
Contested narratives
Zimbabwe’s crisis is decades old and its cause
is contested. Ask the ruling party, ZANU-PF, and it all started when Mugabe
redistributed land from a handful of white commercial farmers to the majority
black population. Upset by the racially corrective nature of land
redistribution, ZANU-PF says, European countries and the United States
imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe.
These sanctions, they argue, caused the
economic crisis that is reaching breaking point. Mugabe railed against the
West’s sanctions and rallied African countries to his anti-imperialist cause.
Sanctions have become a geopolitical football
kicked between the Zimbabwean government and its Western foes
Western officials insist there are no
sanctions against all Zimbabweans, just
targeted restrictions on travel against specific individuals and corporations
deemed to be “obstacles to democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe”.
They add that foreign support to Zimbabweans
continues via bilateral and multilateral organisations working with local civil
society. And that the government cannot be trusted to manage external finance
accountably.
Bottom of Form
Starting in 2001, these sanctions were
reviewed and renewed every year. In 2013 they were suspended for certain
individuals.
The sanctions are based on laws that include
the conditions for their removal. In the US, the law is the Zimbabwe Democracy
and Economic Recovery Act (Zidera), enacted in 2001 and renewed annually ever
since.
Western governments insist that all the
government has to do is undertake democratic reforms and respect human rights
for such restrictions to be removed.
Ask ordinary Zimbabweans about sanctions and
you get a mixed reaction. Some accept
the “sanctions are the cause of all our problems” argument, but many others
blame the country’s troubles on local political elites and their excessively
corrupt behaviour.
Sanctions have become a geopolitical football
kicked between the Zimbabwean government and its Western foes. The truth about
sanctions lies between the two.
Chicken and egg
In 2006, I was at a development conference in
Helsinki, where the Zimbabwe crisis took centre stage.
The head of the UK’s Department of Foreign
Development (DFID) was replaying the argument that there were no sanctions
against Zimbabwe, just targeted measures against individuals.
I asked her if she could confirm what
proportion of social services (education and health) were financed via direct
budget support to the Zimbabwean government. She replied that Zimbabwe had
received almost 40% of external financing for basic services, mainly health and
education.
This support went directly into the budgets of
the ministries. I then asked her whether thus budget support to the government
from foreign partners had continued under in the sanctions era.
She was nuanced: “There was no way the UK,
Europe and US could maintain direct budget support to a government that could
not be trusted with managing money after demonstrations of bad faith and
financial impropriety.” This included the raiding of people’s bank accounts and
pensions, grand corruption and diversion of resources for public services. That
meant no.
Government-to-government aid for vital
services had stopped. Then I asked what would happen to health or education
services if 40% of their budget was withdrawn. She agreed they would collapse.
The truth is that neither the government nor
its former funders in the West were willing to accept responsibility for the
terrible conditions. Much easier to blame the other side.
Long overdue but violently and corruptly
implemented land reform had triggered a disproportionate reaction from the
West. Those same countries said nothing in the mid-1980s when Mugabe massacred
thousands of black Zimbabweans.
It was a quick leap to perceptions of
prejudiced foreign policy positions, given the racial nature of land ownership
that redistribution had sought to correct. Reactions in Western states, and
their backing for opposition politicians, played into Mugabe’s hands.
Horse-trading blame about the cause of
Zimbabwe’s crisis doesn’t help. Is it sanctions or bad government or both?
Beating Sanctions: Rhodesia vs Zimbabwe
This is not the first time that sanctions have
been imposed on our country. When Ian Smith adopted the Unilateral Declaration
of Independence in 1965, Western countries imposed sanctions at the urging of
the liberation movements, who argued that until majority rule was introduced
Rhodesia should be pressured.
Those sanctions lasted until independence in
1980. Although Rhodesia’s wartime economy struggled under sanctions, it did not
collapse. Its currency was trading more strongly than the British Pound.
Manufacturing and agricultural exports were robust and social services did not
collapse.
Why should Zimbabwe be different? Why have
sanctions hit harder on a country at peace than they did on Rhodesia in a civil
war?
The answer is clear: bad governance, poor
leadership, and the corruption of political elites. Were the country
well-governed and led honestly, there is no reason why the suspension of
foreign aid should have led to catastrophe.
What caused it was a failure of leadership.
Instead of responding to changed circumstances and the demands for pluralism
from the opposition, ZANU-PF went into survival mode and resorted to plunder
and scapegoating.
After decades of finger pointing about the
causes of our economic woes, we need an honest discussion. After the coup that brought Emmerson Mnangagwa to power in
November 2017, it emerged that the government had borrowed US$5bn dollars
without approval from Parliament and for which it could not account.
It was suspected that the money was parcelled
out to senior government and Zanu-PF officials and military officers, some to
be used for ZANU-PF’s election campaign last year. Over the past year, the
International Monetary Fund reported that the Reserve Bank has allowed the
energy company Sakunda to redeem over $300m bonds at highly advantageous rates
when almost everyone else was given about a tenth of the face value of their
bonds.
Sakunda
is owned by Kuda Tagwirei, a fuel baron and close confidante of the
president and his deputy, General Constantino Chiwenga. The company was
benefiting from these preferential rates at a time when most people were
struggling with fuel and forex shortages.
This
year, the ministry of finance acknowledged to parliament’s Public Accounts
Committee that it could not account for $3bn from the agricultural subsidy
scheme called “Command Agriculture”. A key player in this scheme was Tagwirei’s
Sakunda Fuels. Last month the government and Reserve Bank suspended Sakunda
accounts, but we understand that order has been lifted.
The
fundamentals of Zimbabwe’s crisis are not caused by sanctions. Yes, when
government-to-government aid was suspended it disrupted clinics and schools,
causing suffering to many people. That was a policy choice by Western states in
response to land reform and corruption. Those states should accept
responsibility for that decision and ask themselves whether cutting off funding
to education and health achieves anything more than making social conditions
even worse.
This
does not exonerate the ZANU-PF government for creating the crises. Since 1982,
Zimbabwe has endured one corruption scandal after the other, all benefiting
senior ZANU-PF officials. Not a single official has ever been held to account.
After the ousting of Mugabe, despite spirited promises by President Mnangagwa,
new and bigger scandals have cropped up.
The
government hires presidential jets for multiple overseas trips while public
hospitals are turning into mass morgues, doctors, nurses, teachers and other
government workers get measly wages, and living conditions in the country have
deteriorated to levels unseen before.
The
country faces its worst drought in years – despite US$3bn having been set aside
for agriculture in 2017 – but we learn that the government is importing maize
from Tanzania at $600 a tonne when the market price is $240 a tonne. Who
organised this contract and who benefits from it? Radio silence from the
government.
ZANU-PF
doth protest too much: Unpacking Zidera
The
US first imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2001 by passing the Zimbabwe
Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which included references to the sending
of troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the private appropriation
of public assets and the fast-track land reform programme.
In
2018, Zidera was amended to remove the DRC deployment and the fast-track land
reform issues. The amendment recognised the government’s effort at clearing its
IMF arrears, which had blocked credit lines. It included measures the
government was required to take to ensure free and fair elections in 2018, such
as keeping the military away from the polls and allowing all parties access to
the state media.
The
amendment introduced some new issues. First, that the government should
implement the 2013 constitution, specifically to respect and protect human rights,
to account for diamond and mineral revenue, to build peace and unity following
the divisive July 2018 elections and to enforce the SADC Tribunal’s decisions
on human rights and land compensation.
On
close analysis there is nothing in the Zidera amendment that is oppressive,
burdensome or impossible for ZANU-PF and the government to deliver. The
government fails to account for diamond and other mineral revenues. The looting
of public as well as private resources is unabated. Raids on bank accounts
continue, with the government and Reserve Bank taking over private citizens’
forex savings.
The
government has dragged its feet on implementing human rights provisions in the
2013 constitution. It holds on to draconian and repressive laws and it condones
violence by state security, protecting known perpetrators of serious
violations.
The
killing of protesters by the army in August 2018, the violent clampdown
on protests by the army and police in January 2019, the banning of protests and
beating of protesters in August 2019 and the continuing spate of abductions,
torture and, at times, killing of government critics, trade union leaders,
opposition officials, satirical comedians and civil society activists clearly
point to the relevance of the concern at the government’s continued terrible
human rights record.
The
issues related to the 2018 election have also been raised by electoral
observers (including non-Western ones) and commentators, as well as the
Motlanthe Commission set up by the government to investigate the August army
killings.
Finally,
the issue of enforcement of the SADC Tribunal decisions is now moot, laid to
rest by President Mnangagwa, ZANU-PF and the government’s commitment to
compensate white commercial farmers dispossessed of land in the early 2000s.
The government, via the ministry of finance, proceeded to make budget
allocation – albeit paltry – for compensating some farmers in 2018. To the
extent that it has accepted and attempted to act on this, it doth protest too
much about it.
Double
standards and sovereign prerogatives
My
view is that sanctions by superpowers – whether targeted on individuals or
specific entities – are ideologically distasteful, ineffective and inconsistent
as an instrument of foreign policy.
They
are often selectively applied against countries seen as unfriendly while
strategically important countries are spared. They are not applied against
Western allies who violate democratic practice and human rights such as Israel,
Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Apart
from offering a bogeyman to ZANU-PF, sanctions are a blunt instrument
But
the foreign policy of a government, including its investment policy, is its own
prerogative. Americans and Europeans can decide where to invest their money and
to whom to give aid. The sudden withdrawal of government-to-government aid
usually hurts ordinary citizens far more than corrupt elites. This is the case
in Zimbabwe, where elites loot public assets and the masses suffer. Apart from
offering a bogeyman to ZANU-PF, sanctions are a blunt instrument.
Can
Zanu-PF have its cake and eat it?
Sanctions
are not the point, in the final analysis. There is clear evidence that ZANU-PF
has plundered and mismanaged the economy.
One
of the responsibilities of a government is to develop policies to manage and
steer the politics and economy forward regardless of the prevailing context. In
wanting to plunder the economy, abuse citizens’ rights, subvert democracy and
violate human rights and then blame it all on the sanctions bogeyman, Zanu-PF
has sought to eat its cake and have it. It cannot.
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