THE malicious lobby by US Senators for their government to strip South Africa of the right to host the 2023 African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the recent haranguing of President Cyril Ramaphosa by Polish authorities are not only an intensification of Western countries’ attempt to lay siege on liberation movements in the SADC region but also serve as critical indicators of purgatory economic moments that are about to visit Pretoria.
The SADC region is largely seen by Western countries as a stumbling block to their neo-colonial project due to its unflinching stance on the values and ideals of the liberation struggle, hence the escalation of their doomed project to go on the offensive against liberation movements in the region in recent times.
ZANU PF and the ANC, together with several other liberation movements, are the prime targets of that offensive drive by Western countries that are trying, but will fail, to replace these Governments with their pliant puppets.
The Senators, led by characters that have been at the forefront of Zimbabwe’s ongoing, relentless economic sabotage by the US, Chris Coons and James Risch, wrote a letter on June 9 2023. The letter was addressed to Uncle Sam’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
They raised ‘Washington’s discomfort with South Africa’s alleged support of Russia in its ongoing military exercise in neighbouring Ukraine’.
Last month, US Ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, sparked a diplomatic row between the two countries when he bizarrely claimed that Uncle Sam had ‘evidence’ that Pretoria had supplied arms to Russia.
Like Zimbabwe, which has been constantly accused of posing ‘an unusual and extraordinary threat to US foreign policy’ since the turn of the millennium, South Africa is gradually teetering on the brink of attracting serious economic retaliation from Western countries that are acutely aware that the Southern African economic powerhouse will soon embark on a process to redress colonial imbalances.
The Russian accusation is merely to slow down the inevitable.
This is why it is important to unpack the latest threat to South Africa’s sovereignty and territorial integrity with the land reform in mind.
AGOA, which was established in 2000 and is often touted as Uncle Sam’s ‘tariff-free scheme to encourage trade with the US’, is a manipulative project aimed at hoodwinking African countries into believing that there are free lunches from Washington.
African countries are told that they have access to the US market via this scheme when the reality is that it is Uncle Sam who has free access to African markets.
Zimbabwe is not part of the ‘initiative’ due to the US’ illegal economic sanctions on the country.
“Thirty-seven African countries have met the AGOA criteria and are eligible for the trade incentives. Zimbabwe does not enjoy any preferential trade under AGOA because of the sanctions imposed on it by the US,” said former RBZ Governor Dr Gideon Gono in a June 17 2007 article titled: ‘How sanctions are ruining Zimbabwe’.
Currently, Zimbabwe is under three forms of US sanctions namely, ZDERA which impacts the country’s access to lines of credit for both Government and the private sector; AGOA which impacts the country’s access to US markets; and lastly OFAC which places Zimbabwe as a high risk country.
And the Senators were merely reflecting Uncle Sam’s stance on South Africa going forward.
“We are seriously concerned that hosting the 2023 AGOA Forum would serve as an implicit endorsement of South Africa’s damaging support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and possible violation of US sanctions law. We encourage you to explore other possible locations to host this year’s forum,” said Coons and Risch, in a letter that was co-signed by Senators Gregory Meeks and Michael McCaul, openly called for imposition of economic sanctions over its neutral stance on the Russia and Ukraine issue.
“Further, these actions by South Africa call into question its eligibility for trade benefits under AGOA due to the statutory requirement that beneficiary countries ‘not engage in activities that undermine US national security or foreign policy interests’…we question whether a country in danger of losing AGOA benefits should have the privilege of hosting the 2023 AGOA Forum.”
And that letter seemed to spur Western countries into further bullying South Africa as President Ramaphosa’s delegation to a peace summit in Ukraine, including his security details, was left stranded at Chopin Airport in Warsaw, Poland.
Poland is Ukraine’s staunch ally.
“They are delaying us, they are putting the life of our president in jeopardy,” Major General Wally Rhoode told journalists.
“We could have been in Kyiv by now and this is all they are doing.
I want you guys to see how racist they are.”
It is in times like these that regional leaders unite against the looming onslaught against liberation movements.
The first port of call is the Zimbabwe August 23 general elections where the West’s stooges (CCC) will be buried at the ballot.
