Feature Zimbabwe
At long last, after 10 years of sitting on its hands, the Zimbabwean gov- ernment has launched an anti-sanctions campaign aimed at getting the debilitating Western economic sanctions removed. Baffour Ankomah was in Harare when an ebullient President Robert Mugabe launched the campaign on 3 March.
Zimbabweans are now fed up with sanctions!
I
N 2001 AND 2002, BRITAIN, THE USA, EU and their allies imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe in reaction to the country’s land reform programme that took land from 4,500 white com-
mercial farmers and distributed it to over one million black farmers. Alongside the economic sanctions were personal ones, including travel bans and asset freezing imposed on individual officials and compa- nies allegedly linked to President Mugabe’s government and the ruling Zanu-PF party.
28 | April 2011 New African
These individuals and companies have since been prevented from doing business with American, British and EU nationals and firms. As the sanctions were imposed outside the UN’s prescribed rules, the Zim- babwean government considers them “il- legal” and has been calling (without doing much more than that) for their removal for the past 10 years, to no avail. Not surprisingly, the sanctions-
imposing countries have been able to use the long tentacles of their media to con-
vince the whole wide world that the sanc- tions are only targeting individuals and companies allegedly involved in or who have aided and abetted violence and hu- man rights abuses in Zimbabwe. And thus, the sanctions do not hurt the ordinary people of Zimbabwe at all. But that is so far from the truth that it
beggars belief that the world has actually believed it. For example, the USA’s Zimba- bwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA), a punitive sanctions-imposing
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92