The Sunday Mail
Leroy Dzenga
THE sanctions debate in Zimbabwe has exposed the gaslighting tendencies of countries behind them.
Gaslighting is a practice in which someone, or in this case a number of countries, psychologically manipulate others to the extent that they question their own memory, perception and sanity.
Whenever there appears to be conversations around the topic, Western missions invest time and resources into convincing locals that their view on the issue is inaccurate.
Now that the lie that “the sanctions are targeted” has been exposed by events, rinsed through two decades of overuse, they are now resorting to deflection.
Last year, towards the commemoration of the SADC Anti-Sanctions Day, the Twitter account belonging to the United States of America Embassy in Zimbabwe did threads attempting to downplay the role of sanctions in the challenges faced by Zimbabweans.
Catch phrases like “it is not sanctions, get rid of corruption and public spending”, were thrown around, in a classic case of “whataboutism”.
The flaw in such reasoning is that instead of confronting the idea of sanctions and exhausting them through platforms of debate, they introduce other elements which they believe are “hurting the country worse”.
In fact, they try to proffer alternative explanations for the hurdles being faced by the country, raising factors like corruption and public service spending.
To the uncritical eye, it may appear sensible that Zimbabwe would be in a better place if graft was eliminated and we keep our expenditure in check, but the danger is focusing on the other variables to the extent of absolving sanctions. Researchers have managed to quantify the extent of the damage that the sanctions have caused, beyond abstract rhetoric.
Dr Nyasha Kaseke of the University Of Zimbabwe Faculty Of Business Studies in 2018 presented findings from a study on the effect of sanctions on the manufacturing sector.
He said between 2010 and 2018, Zimbabwe lost about US$4,5 billion in potential productive capacity which could have been realised in the absence of sanctions.
This is in tandem with the findings of Professor Albert Makochekanwa who at the inaugural SADC-Anti Sanctions Day on October 25, 2019 said Zimbabwe had lost more than US$7 billion as a result of the embargo.
With these facts, among others, it is hard for anyone to sustain an argument that sanctions are not hurting the ordinary citizen.
What the West fails to understand is that by using a ruinous factor such as corruption to measure the damage their own devices are making to the country, they are tacitly admitting that sanctions destroy nations.
Granted, there are areas which Zimbabwe needs to work on, but they cannot be used as an excuse to maintain illegal restrictions against the country. The US’ Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA) which was imposed on Zimbabwe at the instigation of the MDC, has very little to do with the human rights debate.
It is merely seeking to cripple the Zimbabwean economy to ensure that those who seek to replicate our land reform are dissuaded from doing so. What America and her allies are doing is akin to someone pinching your nose and arguing that you are not opening your mouth wide enough to breathe.
Luckily, it appears the days of fooling observers are over.
SADC has remained resolute in its voice.
Heads of States from countries in the region at the just ended United Nations General Assembly were clear on the issue, arguing that like any other country — Zimbabwe deserves to recover from the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic with minimal disruptions.
South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa and Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi, were among those who spoke in no uncertain terms against the economic yoke that Zimbabwe currently endures.
Scholars too are beginning to see through the porosity of sanctions as a method of diplomacy. Professor Daniel Drezner, a Professor of International Politics at Fletcher School of Law in the United States, writes, in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs an international relations magazine, on the manner in which superpowers have abused sanctions.
Titled “The United States of Sanctions: The Use and Abuse of Economic Coercion”, the paper critiques the continued use of sanctions even as their failures remain glaring.
The essay claims that America puts an average of 500 entities on sanctions per year, a rate the academic described as an anomaly.
“This reliance on economic sanctions would be natural if they were especially effective at getting other countries to do what Washington wants, but they are not. The most generous academic estimate of Sanctions’ E-cacy — a 2014 study relying on a data set maintained by the University of North Carolina — found that, at best, sanctions lead to concessions between one-third and one-half of the time,” Professor Dezner writes.
He argues that the United States government does not have mechanisms to measure the usefulness of their sanctions.
“A 2019 Government Accountability Office study concluded that not even the federal government was necessarily aware when sanctions were working. Officials at the Treasury, State, and Commerce Departments, the report noted, stated they do not conduct agency assessments of effectiveness of sanctions in achieving broader US policy goals.”
This means that Zimbabwe and other countries under the yoke of sanctions are enduring outcomes of a process which is not being subjected to any review.
“The problem, however, is that sanctions are hardly cost free. They strain relations with allies, antagonise adversaries, and impose economic hardships on innocent civilians. Thus, sanctions not only reveal American decline but accelerate it, too,” Professor Drezner adds.
Of course Zimbabwe has devised mechanisms to survive even in the presence of sanctions, like the decision to use locally available resources to finance infrastructure projects.
The country’s relationship with China saw it survive Covid-19. If Zimbabwe had relied on the West for the vaccines, the outcome would have been disastrous.
Zimbabwe, especially the Second Republic, has changed its foreign policy thrust to engage and re-engage with countries, even those that have been hostile towards it.
This has been a product of a decision by the national leadership that the era of confrontational disputation on the global stage is behind us.
However, it appears some powers are not reciprocating the goodwill extended to them.
In their eyes, the lives of citizens should continue to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency and regime change overtures.
A few questions bring into perspective the nature of the countries we are dealing with.
Why is it hard for America and the European Union to pay attention to what Zimbabwe (both its citizens and Government) has to say about sanctions?
Why do the superpowers and their allies get angry when Zimbabwe makes friends, what benefit do they derive from an isolated Southern African country?
America’s stance on Zimbabwe and the sanctions is best described by the words of one of its sons Louis CK who said; “When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t.”
As it is, it is not their place to argue when Zimbabwe says she cannot breathe under the knee of sanctions.
