THE signing between Zimbabwe and Russia,
on Thursday last week, of a joint declaration
to counter the devastating effects
of illegal economic sanctions presents the
international downtrodden the platform
to counter global superpowers bent on
maintaining a unipolar world.
The joint declaration, signed by the
two countries’ respective Foreign Affairs
Ministers in Moscow, also seeks to, among
other things, mitigate and address the
adverse impacts of the illegal sanctions
imposed by Western countries.
Coercion has been the tool of choice for
the West when it comes to laying siege on
their perceived ‘enemies’.
Both Harare and Moscow have stood
up against Western powers’ wanton abuse
of perceived weaker nations whose crime
is empowering their citizens as well as
protecting and defending their territorial
integrity.
Therefore, increased collaboration between
the two countries will ensure the
harnessing of local resources and skills to
develop their economies while pursuing
the establishment of a multipolar world
where every country’s voice is heard.
In the case of Zimbabwe, which has
been under US illegal economic sanctions
since December 21 2001, Uncle Sam arrogantly
claims that Harare ‘poses an unusual
and extraordinary threat to the US’
foreign policy and must thus be punished
until a puppet government takes over
power in the country.
And Zimbabwe’s crime?
Humiliating Uncle Sam’s acolytes in
the DRC in 1998 through its stellar fight
against countries that had been funded by
the US to remove the Congolese government
thereby culling the Western country’s
prospects for looting minerals in that
country as well as embarking on the Land
Reform and Resettlement Programme in
2000.
The ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’
statement is meant to cow other African
countries into submission and desist from
empowering their citizens.
But that is merely meant is to delay the
inevitable as we have seen in recent times.
South Africa, which has had enough of
those threats, has since started putting in
motion processes to give back land to its
rightful owners.
That was not surprising. The US reacted
in the ‘normal mode’ — unleashing illegal
economic sanctions on Pretoria.
Russia has faced a staggering 16 500
sanctions from the US, the UK, the EU,
Australia and Canada since February 2022
when it embarked on a military exercise in
neighbouring Ukraine.
Specially, those sanctions have taken
aim at Russian foreign currency worth
US$350 billion prior to the Ukraine war.
That money, together with more 70
percent of Russian banks’ assets were frozen
while the majority of those financial
institutions were removed from SWIFT,
a high-speed message service for money
transfers.
A February 23 2024 story by BBC titled
‘What are the sanctions on Russia and
have they affected its economy?’ gives insightful
perspectives on the intended objectives
of sanctions in general and those
imposed on Russia in particular.
The BBC said:“Sanctions are penalties
imposed by one country on another . . .
they are among the toughest measures
nations can take, short of going to war?”
The report goes on, unveiling the sanctions
that have been imposed on Russia:
“Western nations have also:
l Banned exports of technology Russia
might use for making weapons;
l Banned imports of gold and diamonds
from Russia;
l Banned flights from Russia;
l Sanctioned oligarchs — the wealthy
business people linked with the Kremlin
— and impounded their yachts;
Russia’s oil industry has been another
major target.
“The US and UK banned Russian oil
and natural gas, while the EU has banned
seaborne crude imports.”
There is a pattern to Western countries’
malice in imposing those sanctions on
both Zimbabwe and Russia.
In the case of Zimbabwe, Uncle Sam
claims that he is seeking to ‘promote’
democracy, human rights and accountability.
Those human rights are specifically
those of whites who lost ‘their’ farms under
the Land Reform Programme — a few
whites who owned and controlled vast
tracts of land in Zimbabwe, the majority
of which was largely underutilised.
Through its sanctions law, Marginsky
Law, the US ensures that the country is
prohibited from accessing fresh capital
from markets across the globe.
What this means is that Harare can only
be to access fresh capital at a premium,
making the cost of business far much
higher compared to other countries.
In order to cover up the damage that
has been inflicted by those sanctions both
on the country and on the lives of the
majority, the US flaunts its now difficult
to sustain statement that it has provided
Zimbabwe with US$5 billion in development
‘aid’ since 1980.
But while the benefits of that aid are
nowhere to be seen, several independent
reports have since indicated that the country
has lost more than US$5 billion in potential
revenue due to those sanctions.
In 2021, UN Special Rapporteur on Unilateral
Coercive Measures, Alena Douhan,
visited Zimbabwe and conducted a study
which laid bare the effects of sanctions on
the country.
“The sanctions had exacerbated pre-existing
social and economic challenges with
devastating consequences for the people
of Zimbabwe, especially those living in
poverty, women, children, elderly, people
with disabilities as well as marginalised
and other vulnerable groups,” said Douhan
in her report.
This was followed by the Institute of
Security Studies report in 2022 which
stated that the high risk that the country
has attracted due to the sanctions ‘tends
to scare away investors’.
While the sanctions have evidently taken
a toll on the masses’ livelihoods, the
Government of Zimbabwe has stepped up
to the plate and came up with innovative
measures of developing its economy using
local resources.
The massive infrastructural projects
being undertaken, the increased gold output,
and tobacco output tell the glowing
story of a country and people scaling new
heights in spite of the albatross.
