The Sunday Mail
We are being told that a British trade delegation will be coming to Zimbabwe by the end of this month, the first bit of some warm news in a long time from that freezing island which was once an empire.
If the visit materialises, it will likely coincide with a review by the European Union of the sanctions it imposed on Zimbabwe in 2002. Some potentially positive news, too.
Britain’s new ambassador to Zimbabwe, Ms Catriona Laing, has indicated that the sanctions may not be renewed. That is a repeat of indications made by the former EU resident representative to Zimbabwe Ado Dell’Araccia before he left the country more than a month ago.
Before he left, he reminded local civic society organisations that they were caught in a time warp and were failing to exploit new opportunities to play a positive role in the evolving new Zimbabwe following last year’s elections. He dismissed the propaganda about a leadership crisis in the country.
Needless to say he earned himself nasty expletives and epithets from those who for more than a decade have made a living by manufacturing crisis after crisis in the country and would be happier if Zimbabwe plunged into political chaos.
Most of them are facing a crisis of funding because they have no political crisis to hawk around for donors to put in their money into.
There has to be some promise of a huge return on investment to trick donors now given the enduring and lingering financial crisis in Europe. But that’s a subject for another day.
Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa recently declared that Zimbabwe was open for business. This was not news. But it was perhaps important to repeat that statement to help British companies and their American counterparts to scale over their self-imposed exile from Zimbabwe over some nebulous, self-righteous pique over human rights violations.
While they waited, the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Brazilians and others further afield, were making their hay in various sectors of Zimbabwe’s economy. The political change they had been promised by Tony Blair was not forthcoming while business opportunities were being snapped up.
If they have finally seen the light, let them come. The only difference is that they will find the terrain that much changed, what with the deepening indigenisation and economic empowerment ethos.
They will find a Zimbabwean who is a little wiser than he was soon after independence when racial equality was no more than a manner of political speak. We now have a Zimbabwean who can talk back to the former master and demand his rightful dues.
There is a new Zimbabwean who has claimed control of his main natural resource, the land, and is not about to surrender it easily. The land, that bedrock of all economic activity which necessitated the imposition of sanctions on the country by the European Union, Canada, Australia and the United States of America.
This is a point which Catriona Laing needs to appreciate fast if she hopes to make a lasting imprint on Zimbabwe-UK relations, to leave an enduring legacy as the woman who made a difference. As it is, she appears to be missing the point.
Here is why.
She says there are “two sets of restrictions” imposed on Zimbabwe by the European Union. Let me start with what she calls the second set. She mentions the travel ban and asset freezes against President Mugabe and the First Lady. Let’s give it to her if she is so desperate to push this divide and rule policy.
“The first is called the appropriate measures, which were put in place following the challenges of the elections of 2002, which means the EU at the moment does not have a formal political dialogue with the Government of Zimbabwe,” she said in an interview with The Herald last week.
“Various measures are being looked at right now and as of the 1st of November potentially could expire. And if that happens, then the political dialogue restarts and the Government of Zimbabwe becomes a full partner and looking at how development expenditure is allocated,” she said.
She has probably been lied to or she doesn’t want to acknowledge the inconvenient truth of Clare Short’s offensive letter that Tony Blair’s Labour government was not bound by obligations entered into at Lancaster House in 1979. She has probably never heard about the insignificant people of Svosve. Most likely, the only believable tale that has made sense to her is about “violent land invasions” as Mugabe’s gimmick to stay in power.
To Britain and her allies, it was inconceivable that after losing the referendum on a new constitution in 2000 to take white commercial farms without compensation, it was possible for Zanu-PF to win future elections.
It was inconceivable that Mugabe could go on to win the presidential election in 2002. Which he did, thus yielding for Britain and local white commercial farmers “the challenges of the elections of 2002”.
If Mugabe had lost that election there would have been no challenge. It was still early enough to kick out the land “invaders” from “white farms”. In that fateful February, Zimbabwe had declared that it would not accredit Swedish Pierre Schori as head of the EU election observer mission. He had, after the 2000 parliamentary elections, declared them neither free nor fair because the opposition had not been allowed to campaign openly. That’s how relations were soured.
When Government refused to accredit him, he still came in with a part of his unaccredited team of “observers”, insisting; “It is up to the EU to decide who should lead the mission and who should be in the mission.” I wonder whether there is a single African country which can impose itself the same way on any EU and US processes. The EU threatened sanctions if it would not have its way on Schori. It didn’t have it. He was expelled, and Zimbabweans have paid for their insolence against Europe with sanctions which are now estimated to have cost the country about $42 billion.
Those “challenges” of 2000 have blocked all “political dialogue” between Zimbabwe and the EU. The biggest challenge being that Mugabe’s re-election meant it was now impossible to reverse the land reform. This is the point. If this human rights challenge occurring in Zimbabwe could cause holy Europe so much anger for 12 years, then Africans have been very foolish not to seriously consider reparations by the EU and US for slavery and colonial plunder spanning five centuries.
Catriona Laing has some homework to do than simply regurgitating self-serving old women’s tales by NGOs looking for donor money. The land reform is here to stay, challenges notwithstanding.
