The Sunday Mail
President E.D. Mnangagwa
Commemorating SADC Anti-Sanctions Day
IN 10 days, Zimbabwe joins the rest of the Southern African region, Africa and the progressive world in marking the SADC-declared Anti-Sanctions Day, which is on October 25 each year.
We remain eternally grateful to His Excellency Joseph Pombe Magufuli, the late President of the United Republic of Tanzania, for initiating the decision that led to the landmark adoption of this commemorative day. May his dear soul rest in eternal peace. Similarly, we deeply thank the Tanzanian government and its people for tirelessly taking a leading role each year, in the commemoration of this day.
Sanctions, an affront to our sovereignty
President Mnangagwa and his team tour the Chilmund Chemicals Plant on Friday
October 25 is a day through whose SADC-wide activities we remind the world of the injustices committed against the Zimbabwean people. We also use such commemoration to stir the conscience of those guilty of imposing those unjust sanctions against our people. Above all, we use the day to mobilise African and world opinion against these unilateral, illegal sanctions, which amount to a challenge and an affront to our sovereignty.
Beyond protests
Since the imposition of those spiteful, illegal sanctions, more than almost two-and-a-half decades ago, Zimbabwe has since evolved. From indignant political protests that marked the first two decades of those punitive measures, our response as a nation has grown and transformed to the positive action of pulling ourselves by our bootstraps.
Mobilising ourselves internally
This new stance which we adopted soon after the advent of the Second Republic plays out alongside the traditional broad-based agitation and resolute campaign against those illegal sanctions, coupled with increased efforts to engage and exert diplomatic pressure on those who designed and unleashed those punitive measures on us. That way, we have been able to organise and mobilise ourselves internally, while still pursuing a dual policy of agitation, engagement and re-engagement. Engagement allows us to win to our side new friends and allies against those heinous sanctions; re-engagement enables us to continue dialoguing with those responsible for those sanctions which were visited on us unilaterally, and outside the norms and authority of the United Nations.
Not in our DNA
Our decision to reorganise ourselves internally in order to withstand more effectively those heinous sanctions has restored agency and given us initiative, thus helping us throw off the debilitating badge of victimhood and helplessness. A nation such as ours — with vast natural resources, and with an educated and hardworking, enterprising populace — can never be at the mercy of coercive measures meant to collapse our economy, and to force us to capitulate. Simply, acquiescing to external pressure is against our DNA, and goes against our heroic experience as a people who survived and successfully resisted colonialism for over a century.
Believing in ourselves
To win this fight against illegal sanctions, we must fully believe in ourselves and in our capabilities as a people. That vital sense of self-belief, buttressed by national unity and solidarity from friends and allies, makes us invincible. From the early phase of our struggle for independence, we now know that agitation alone, interspersed with periodic appeals delivered from rostrums of international forums like the United Nations, will not deliver on our quest for full sovereignty and self-determination.
Our enemies need a lot more than sheer pleas and persuasion. They need to see us forging ahead in spite of their sanctions, to hear and respect us. We have to show real determination to beat those sanctions, and to prosper our people and nation under the adverse conditions they create. It is with that reckoning that we crafted our vision and our development plans, based primarily on internal resources and efforts.
From acquisition to food security
From the days of our historic land reforms under the First Republic, we have constantly reminded ourselves that our land is the economy, and the economy is our land. The First Republic achieved the feat of delivering our land through land acquisition; the Second Republic is on the verge of fully translating that historic land acquisition into a new, indigenous-driven economy, which durably delivers on food security, while yielding a diversified agricultural export base.
As I write, Zimbabwe is now exporting berries and citrus fruits to many parts of the world, including to the People’s Republic of China on preferential but competitive terms. We are also poised to export wheat, making us the first-ever African country to do so. These developments, alongside national food security, which have been made possible through mechanisation and modernisation of our agriculture, are key milestones in our struggle against illegal sanctions. Above all, they fortify belief in ourselves and in our capacity to turn things around, however harsh and hostile sections of the outer world might be.
Leveraging on our strategic resources
Our response to illegal sanctions should and must mobilise our vast mineral resources. I am happy that Zimbabwe is now on the global map as a mining country, including as a major source of strategic minerals such as lithium, platinum group of metals and countless precious minerals that are keenly sought after globally. We are, thus, reckoned as a key player in the global transition to a green, non-carbon economy.
Those countries that have chosen to be hostile to us are increasingly realising that there is more to be gained through positive bilateral cooperation than through unmerited, unilateral hostility. That new realisation is weakening the broad Western front forged in the past to impose sanctions against us. We thank SADC, Africa and the progressive world for taking up our case consistently, persistently, including yearly at the United Nations.
Building an industrial economy
In the meantime, we continue to open our mineral sector to countries of goodwill, while intensifying our ambitious programme to ensure greater value addition for all our minerals. The ultimate goal is to build an industrial economy driven by our own finite resources, and which no power on earth can sanction. Our friend-to-all, enemy-to-none foreign policy, buttressed by ease-of-doing business reforms and goal, is gradually winning us foreign global capital and key technologies we need to realise greater value from our mineral resources. It is important for all actors in the mining sector to realise that their efforts do contribute in no small way towards breaking the siege laid on us through hostile sanctions.
Local manufactures to reduce import bill
Our industry, too, has a big role to play in the fight against sanctions. Merely by ramping up production, and by ensuring that more goods on our shelves are locally produced, our industry actually blunts those otherwise ruinous sanctions, while transforming the structure of our economy towards the tertiary.
I am very happy that we continue to see more and more big industrial projects coming on stream, thus contributing towards the realisation of our Vision 2030, by which we envision Zimbabwe that is an upper middle-income society. Government is working flat out to ensure that the power needs for mining and industry are met affordably. We need both sectors to play a full part in our broad, proactive response to illegal sanctions.
Breakthrough at HIT and BUSE
As already stated, our biggest resource in the fight against illegal sanctions are our people. We must show faith in our people by giving them full space and support in pursuing their dreams and their creative urge. In the past two weeks, I had the pleasure to witness what our youngsters in tertiary colleges are capable of. At the Harare Institute of Technology, HIT, I saw an exciting research project which will see us producing lithium batteries so key to the emerging global green economy. Similarly, at Bindura University of Science Education, BUSE, I opened a project which will manufacture chemicals we need in purifying bulk water for our towns and cities.
Both projects are highly impactful and will reduce, to an enormous degree, our propensity to import. A national economy which evolves weaned from dependence on imports is better able to withstand exogenous pressures. Both projects show the value of belief in ourselves, and in extending greater support to research and development, in our struggle against illegal sanctions. Government must spare no efforts in supporting innovation hubs and all research efforts in our institutions. Quite often, the greatest blow against illegal sanctions comes from small research labs quietly tucked in small rooms, and manned by our unassuming sons and daughters.
Mobilising our diaspora community
As we commemorate the SADC Anti-Sanctions Day, I want all Zimbabweans in the diaspora to know that they continue to have a huge role to play. They have been assisting in the battle against illegal sanctions through remittances, which now exceed US$1 billion. We appreciate them deeply. From my interaction with Zimbabwean professionals in the diaspora, I noted a positive desire not just to remit savings, but also to repatriate knowledge, skills, competences, expertise and experience garnered over the years in different parts of the world, where our nationals continue to play leading roles.
A Zimbabwe which recognises and welcomes back its sons and daughters, who until now have been living abroad, is a Zimbabwe less vulnerable to external coercive measures. I direct all our institutions to use the impending October 25 to reflect a little more and deeper on what else we, as Government, could and must do to attract this key national human resource, which is keen to come back home and to contribute.
Thank You, SADC, Africa, progressive world!
Let me conclude by heartily thanking SADC, Africa and the progressive world for standing with Zimbabwe in its fight against illegal Western sanctions. In return, Zimbabwe opens herself to you, as her friends and allies, to participate in the rebuilding and growing of a strong, sanctions-insulated economy.
Together, we can forge lasting and mutually beneficial partnerships in key areas of our economy: agriculture, mining, industry, tourism and infrastructure development. The time has now come for us to turn our solidarity founded on protests and appeals, into more positive and gainful economic partnerships which help Zimbabwe plug any felt points of vulnerability to external coercion. Indeed, joint investments are now the new way of saying No! to sanctions.
