The Sunday Mail
US president Barack Obama has been nothing short of a huge let down for peoples of the Third World, and particularly Africa where his forbears have their bones.
His effete presidency was made worse by the overbearing role of the Pentagon whose pursuit of the so-called war on terror ensured Obama was not able to stop the endless wars which America is fighting from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria.
But a small gesture towards a struggling Latin American nation which has been under American economic strangulation since 1961 could redeem Obama’s blighted legacy.
On Wednesday last week, Obama took a historic step to “normalise” relations with Cuba.
According to agency reports, Obama “aims to expand economic ties, open an embassy in Havana, send high-ranking US officials including secretary of state John Kerry to visit, and review Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The US is also easing restrictions on travel to Cuba, including for family visits, official government business and educational activities. But tourist travel remains banned”.
Although this gesture does not restore full economic engagement between the two neighbouring nations, one Cuban described it as “like a shot of oxygen”, just to indicate what they have lived through over the past five decades.
Only a victim of serious propaganda would believe that a nation as small as Cuba could ever pose any economic or military threat to the United States.
But that island state became a serious threat to the US soon after the 1959 Revolution when Fidel Castro aligned his country to the Soviet Union.
This was during the Cold War and the Cuban action fell directly in the realm of the Munro doctrine, that if you are not with us you are against us.
Professor Marjorie Cohn of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law explains the spirit and intention of the economic blockade against Cuba, which is estimated to have cost the island state more than US$1 trillion.
After it was clear that ideologically Cuba was aligned to the Soviet Union, Castro became an undesirable neighbour. He had to go and the usual bogey of human rights became the rallying point.
The infamous Bay of Pigs invasion to topple Castro failed.
A senior state department official then conceived a brilliant idea for then president Dwight Eisenhower.
The memo allegedly proposed, according to Professor Cohn, “a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the (Castro) government”. (Was it US assistant secretary of state for African affairs Walter Kainsteiner who said sanctions would force Zimbabweans to stone their politicians on the streets?)
For more than 50 years the United States has pursued this evil plot against a small state which has neither the resources nor the intention to fight back.
For 50 years the policy has failed to achieve its evil goal. And for 50 years the United States has given succor to terrorist organisations operating from south Florida pursuant to this burning goal.
All has failed.
After 18 months of secret negotiations between US and Cuban officials, and the involvement of Pope Francis, Obama finally realised not only the futility but ridiculousness of this inhuman policy and its diabolic consequences.
Speaking after the signing of the deal to mend relations, Obama observed that after 50 years of failure “it’s time for a new approach”.
He declared; “I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result.”
But Obama’s action is historic and bold in another sense. There is a very powerful anti-Castro constituency based in Florida, a very important state in American elections.
It constitutes a powerful lobby which influences how Americans perceive the Cuban government.
Obama cannot hope to gain favour for the Democrats in future elections.
More than that, Florida is the hub of most clandestine activities against the Cuban government in Havana which the famous “Cuban Five” were originally sent by Castro to investigate.
A deal to normalise relations between America and Cuba undercuts the tap root to their funding and rear bases.
If the American government is acting in good faith, it cannot continue to give these terrorists protection.
There is an even greater hurdle to Obama’s last ditch, valedictory gesture which exposes the trouble with American democracy; Congress and the Republicans who are to assume control in January.
The US often finds it easy to impose tough sanctions on states and individuals it doesn’t like, but has a cumbersome process when it seeks to reverse those sanctions once approved by Congress.
So in practice, President Obama’s well-meaning deal remains no more than good intentions until Congress gives authorisation, which doesn’t come easy.
Listen to what a key Republican said the moment President Obama announced the Cuban deal on Wednesday: “Relations with the Castro regime should not be revisited, let alone normalised, until the Cuban people enjoy freedom – and not one sooner.”
That was House speaker John Boehner.
“There is no ‘new course’ here, only another in a long line of mindless concessions to a dictatorship that brutalises its people and schemes with our enemies.”
When these sentiments are read side by side with the purpose of the original sanctions as quoted by Prof Cohn, the evil underlying the whole plan, one feels a deep sense of disillusionment with America’s hypocritical motto on their currency: “In God We Trust.”
It is time the world interrogated the nature of the American god, whether it is the same God that Christians the world over to church to worship.
I raise this issue most seriously given that Zimbabwe has suffered the fate of Cuba for merely declaring that only Zimbabweans have ultimate authority over all resources encompassed by a little geographical territory called Zimbabwe. That Zimbabwe cannot continue to maintain the same economic relations with former colonial descendants here and expect a different quality of life for its citizens in the long term, hence the land reform programme.
The US responded to that otherwise very innocuous declaration with its brutally cynical Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, claiming by that declaration, Zimbabwe posed “a serious and continuing threat to American foreign policy “.
Like Cuba, Zimbabwe has suffered economic strangulation for its principled stance and has also been a victim of its own citizens in and outside the country influencing how the country is perceived by the outside world.
And like all situations where intentions tend to correspond with the right propaganda, perceptions easily become the reality.
Perhaps, even as a mere gesture given the limited scope of his powers, it is time Obama realised the need for “a new approach” to US-Zimbabwe engagement, and leave the rest to Congress.
It might just salvage the tattered legacy of his presidency in Africa.
◆ Joram Nyathi is the Zimpapers Group Political Editor
