The Sunday Mail
Almost a third of the world — being the 2,4 billion people who profess to be Christians — are celebrating Easter today.
Without paying any mind to it, this seems to a thoroughly mundane fact and holiday, when it is anything but.
Sometimes — if not often-times — human beings become enslaved by routine to such an extent that ideals, values and occasions progressively lose meaning and become pedestrian.
You see, the widespread observance of the Easter holiday is a tacit recognition that a third of humanity believes that Jesus, as a historical figure, lived, was crucified and, most crucially, rose from the dead.
This is a big deal!
Viewed through theological lenses, it, therefore, means billions of people around the world believe that more than 2000 years ago, God — the creator of Heaven and Earth, and everything in it — reduced himself into a human being, walked amongst us for about three decades, was killed, rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven, from where he continues to have absolute dominion over the universe. Easter essentially encapsulates these beliefs, which are the hallmark of the Christian faith.
Also, it is such beliefs that assures people like Bishop Lazi that faith gives an inherently irrepressible spirit capable of overcoming even the most extraordinary of odds.
In Matthew 17: 7-20, Jesus reminds us the importance of faith: “You unbelieving and perverse generation … how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? … Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Indeed, nothing should be impossible.
Faith really moves mountains.
New World Order
This year’s Easter holidays come at a time when the world is in the throes of cataclysmic change in global politics, where the foundations of a unipolar world — dominated by the Washington consensus and the hegemony of capitalism — is under serious threat.
Clearly, Bishop Lazi’s prophecy made at the beginning of the pandemic that we are likely to emerge to a whole new world after the global health crisis is slowly coming to pass.
Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, which was launched on February 24 to check the brazen and ambitious expansion of the US-led NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) eastwards towards Moscow, has brought matters to a head.
It has exposed the potent and coercive instruments that Washington relies on to maintain its world dominance.
You should never be fooled: America’s supremacy is not underwritten by a superior military but an influential US dollar.
We are all too familiar of the abysmal failures of US military campaigns over the years.
Who can forget how they were roundly routed during Vietnam War, which culminated in their ignominious departure in April 1975?
But this was before more than 47 000 American’s had shed their blood in the failed campaign.
Perhaps most embarrassing is the farcical raid in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993 by supposedly elite American troops who wanted to capture allies of General Mohamed Farah Aideed, who was contemptously considered to be a warlord.
In the fierce battles that ensued, Aideed’s so-called militia downed two Black Hawk helicopters and killed 18 Americans.
It was an unforgettable tale of a superpower being given an ass-whooping — forgive the language — by relative unknowns. Kikikiki.
The image of dead American soldiers being dragged in the streets of Mogadishu will forever be an indelible stain on the Pentagon’s conscience.
Not surprisingly, within six months, the US, with tails firmly tucked between its legs, withdrew its forces from Somalia.
But the most glaring and recent episode of that failure is the unashamed withdrawal from Afghanistan, where, despite spending more than US$2 trillion and losing about 4 000 troops, the Americans couldn’t stop the Taliban from taking back power in Kabul.
So, the long and short of it is: If you are in the habit of credulously believing in the Rambo-inspired Hollywood tales of America’s invincibility, then perish the thought.
Weaponising the dollar
As we have seen lately, America and her allies’ concerted campaign to degrade the Russian Federation has largely centred on unilateral sanctions through which the US-dollar is weaponised.
On February 26, we saw the US, EU, Canada and UK agreeing to ban select Russian banks from SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), which facilitates the ease of global transactions.
Throttling the payments systems and trying to browbeat countries still willing to do business with Moscow have been the foremost weapons that are being used in the latest proxy war between Russia and NATO.
It is a strategy that Harare knows all too well, especially after having some of its money seized by the US’ Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) since the imposition of ZDERA (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery) in December 2001.
True to what former US assistant secretary of state for African Affairs Chester Crocker had hoped for, sanctions indeed did make Zimbabwe’s “economy scream” and collapsed the local currency, but they hopelessly failed to effect regime change.
However, the sanctions are not actually working out as planned in Russia as countries, most of which are increasingly wary of someday being at the receiving end of Washington coercive instruments, are seriously considering moving away from both SWIFT and the US dollar as a matter of future national security.
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which represent close to half the world population, seem to be leading the charge and are now actively promoting trade in their own currencies.
A move away from the greenback, particularly in oil transactions, would likely spell future economic ruin for Washington.
Reports early in the year that Saudi Arabia was considering selling oil to China in yuan were quite ominous, especially at a time when relations between the US and most Gulf States are not in the best of shape.
You see, high oil prices and the prospect of losing the dollar as a reserve currency have always been long-held fears by the White House and US Treasury Department.
We get this valuable insight from Donald Trump’s former security adviser John Bolton in his book “The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir”, which was published in June 2020. “Commentators remarked periodically how often the Administration resorted to sanctions and tariffs as instruments of national power. This may be true compared to earlier Presidents, but there is no evidence these measures were truly effective, systematic, or well executed,” he writes.
“The real story was much more complex, primarily because neither Trump nor Treasury Secretary (Steve) Mnuchin was interested in or willing to pursue a sanctions policy with resolve and consistency.
To the contrary, Mnuchin argued that the constant use of sanctions, and the pressure we put on the international financial system, would result over time in the tool’s being weakened, as states impacted by the sanctions sought to evade them. He argued further that using access to the US financial system as one of our main tools would undermine the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and encourage others, like Russia and China, to conduct transactions in euros or through countertrade and other techniques. It was a given that countries would try to evade sanctions.”
Apparently, this nightmare is slowly becoming a reality.
Our own heroes
Through all this, we learn that Washington usually gets its way by targeting the economies, particularly currencies, of its adversaries, not least Zimbabwe.
You see, a currency is a valuable transactional tool whose weaknesses are likely to be keenly felt by the population.
However, despite the weaknesses of our own currency, which are exacerbated by US and EU sanctions that compromise the country’s balance of payment situation, we have, by necessity, to wean ourselves from overdependence on the greenback.
It is unsustainable!
Ironically, the solution to the weaknesses of the Zimbabwe dollar is using it more — not abandoning it. In time, the continued growth of the economy will sufficiently anchor its value. There is a lot of effort behind the scenes to robustly defend the value of the local unit.
The answer is inward, not outward.
Over the past four years, we have witnessed for ourselves how local resources, local skills and expertise, including harnessing our own international capacities, have made the much-needed difference in our developmental aspirations. Leveraging on own skills and resources has not only insulated us from the vagaries and volatility of the international markets, but it has firmly placed our destiny firmly in our own hands.
The unprecedented local infrastructure development is being driven by local companies using internally generated resources.
The positive spin-offs and multiplier effect this is having on the economy is immense.
If the same pace of investments and development continues, it is clear that Zimbabwe will likely be radically transformed in medium to long term.
After more than two decades under a deleterious regime of economic sanctions, we have learnt to wriggle free from the noose and chart a new and transformative route forward.
It is folly, if not downright foolish, thinking the whiteman will come to deliver us with bagfuls of cash. Such thoughts can only be the doughy musings of a colonised mind.
We are the heroes and liberators we are waiting for.
All that we need to do is to have faith and believe.
Nothing should be impossible.
Bishop out!
