By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

IN previous instalments, I have suggested that Zimbabwe’s experience of economic sanctions should now be included in the history curriculum.

The need to teach about sanctions as part of Zimbabwe’s contemporary history arises from three reasons:  

• First, children who were infants and toddlers when the white sanctions were imposed in 2001 are now youths in colleges and universities and their numbers are significant in relation to those who were already adults. 

It is the future of these youths which will be shaped by the current sanctions but they do not know much about this matter.

• Second, international scholars cited by Elias Davidson of Global Research pointed out that, based on the scientific study of recent cases, blanket economic warfare (sanctions) imposed on a whole nation are not a humane alternative to military aggression as some pacifists allege, but actually a more indiscriminate form of war because the sanctions are masked in humanitarian and ‘democratic’ euphemisms meant to deceive the victims.  

In kinetic war, people know they are at war and behave accordingly.  

In this regard, targeting the economy through sanctions is incompatible with human rights. 

It is a violation of human rights.

• Third, the same scholars point out that when they examined the way these economic sanctions are supposed to work, they are not different from terrorism which targets innocent civilians in the belief that the civilians will force their leaders in government to step down or to change policy; or the civilians will stage uprisings and riots which will overthrow the Government.  

Sanctions, therefore, constitute a form of extortion or what whites like to call ‘blackmail’ when in fact it is ‘whitemail’.  

The sanctions against Zimbabwe have the added distinction of being racially motivated.

Now, whether or not the majority of the people of Zimbabwe accept these conclusions by some scholars, there is no question that sanctions are a critical subject covering now 20 years of Zimbabwe’s history as an independent nation and raising the historical, moral and material issues pointed out by Davidson and the scholars he cites in The Mechanism of Economic Sanctions: Changing Perceptions and Euphemisms.

How sanctions operate 

• The first highly noticeable mode of operation of sanctions is the need for propaganda, deceit and lies in order ‘to hide the (actual) mechanism by which such measures are expected to achieve their declared purposes’ in order “…to imply that these measures target (only) wrongdoers,” and in order “…to imply that such measures are compatible with humanitarian principles.” 

So, unilateral illegal sanctions tend to perpetuate deceit, lies and propaganda throughout international affairs and the media. They spew and spread media poison. 

• The second highly noticeable mode, when actual cases are examined, is that “…politicians (and their collaborators) are loath to acknowledge that a political goal is to be achieved by inflicting severe suffering on a civilian population. 

To hurt innocent civilians in order to extract concessions from a government is, after all, what is defined in US law (including the Patriot Act) as international terrorism.” 

In his 2008 book, The Casino Economy: Extraordinary Measures for Extraordinary Challenges, former RBZ Governor Dr Gideon Gono described the ways in which racial sanctions on Zimbabwe constituted acts of economic terror. 

• The third feature of the operation of sanctions is that US leaders and other white leaders imposing the sanctions did so after being warned, more than enough times, from many case studies already “…that economic sanctions target the civilian population of a given territory as a whole, particularly the most vulnerable segments of society,” which is to say, they already knew, even in 2001, that they would hurt the most helpless sections of the population, that is, those who lack the means to run away or to cushion themselves from the impact.  

People won’t chase away or murder their popularly elected leaders as an intended goal of sanctions unless they are severely hurt by the said sanctions.

• The fourth feature of the operation is the paradox of what in Zimbabwe we call the ‘chema economy’ or ‘criminal humanitarianism’. 

This is the fact that those imposing the sanctions know that they would defeat their own purpose for imposing sanctions if their charity to the victims was truly to compensate fully for the harm inflicted by the same sanctions. 

Moreover, the sanctions would not be renewed 20 times! Renewal of the sanctions means that the damage or pain is moving closer and closer to the objective of inflicting maximum pain; closer and closer to the breaking point, which means the charity is an integral part of the propaganda and lies.

Davidson in his study set out questions which should be part of the study of the history of economic sanctions: 

“Are not all civilians, without distinction, protected by the principles of international humanitarian law?  

Is it ethical, or even lawful, for governments to coerce or punish innocent people?  

How can measures that knowingly infringe the human rights of healthy, but innocent, adults, such as the right to travel, to work and to live in dignity, be justified on the account that the individual in question is not a member of a vulnerable group?  

Can children be spared when destitution is imposed on their parents?”

There is therefore a yawning gap between the language used to justify economic sanctions and the realities of those sanctions as well as the cumulative evidence gathered from contemporary historical cases. 

According to Davidson:

“The immediate purpose of economic sanctions is, however, to cripple the economy, or more accurately, to severely impair the living conditions of the civilian population.” 

That is why the sanctions against Zimbabwe were preceded, and continue to be accompanied, by tall lies and thick propaganda.

Why the disaster of sanctions takes long to be noticed

Story tellers use the example of the frog or toad who gets cooked comfortably in a pool heated by a slow heater. Compared to kinetic war, sanctions are a slow cooker!  

Because the water quickly adjusts the heat via even circulation, there is no spot where the toad can detect immediate impact. By the time it becomes clear that things have really changed, it may be too late to jump out of the hot water.

Economic sanctions affect the whole economy, (most if not all sectors) and its global relations.  

There are no loud explosions or bombs or columns of smoke! There is no Pioneer Column as in 1890!  The war is everywhere and nowhere for most observers. Only sharp observers can see the slow disappearance of 30-day-to-pay invoices; the slow disappearance of cheques and their replacement with demands for cash or instant and inflationary mobile cash; the gradual emigration of skilled persons looking for greener pastures; the fact that buildings are no longer being painted or 

renovated; the shortages of medicines for hospitals and for cattle, sheep and goats; the breakdown of infrastructure and so on.

Government can help to slow down the impact by engaging in fire-fighting projects as stop-gap measures and by waging campaigns against bad administration and corruption, forgetting that the overall sanctioned economy itself generates much of the corruption as well because of sanctions.

Citing George A Lopez’s Toward Ethical Economic Sanctions, the Edmund Rice Centre concluded that: “All sanctions have severe humanitarian and social consequences; foster black market criminality (often controlled by state forces or paramilitary groups); harm the very constituencies within a country that were most supportive of advancing human rights norms; strengthen the repressive forces against which sanctions are supposedly aimed without achieving the desired political changes.”

In the case of Zimbabwe, for instance, it is the landless peasant population who were at the forefront of liberation, democratisation and the demand for equitable land redistribution for the majority. It is the very same povo who have been most severely hit by sanctions. This is because sanctions starved the country of capital at a time when massive capital was most needed by the resettled landless peasants! So, the peasants who bore the brunt of the liberation war became the prime target of illegal sanctions at that very point (2001) when they needed capital most for resettlement. It is of critical significance that the scholars scrutinising the effects of sanctions on innocent civilians keep comparing the declaration of sanctions to the declaration of war.  

Declarations of war have the effect of devaluing both lives and assets of those targeted.  

The value of resettled farms was reduced when it became clear they would be starved of investment as a result of white sanctions!

What happens to a society, its people and its assets when threatened with crippling sanctions is comparable to what happens when a society is threatened with an imminent military attack.

The lives and livelihoods of people are devalued because weapons of war hit randomly and no one knows for sure how many will die and how many will survive. Likewise, the forces agitating for devaluation through sanctions have never been willing to set a limit at which the Zimbabwe dollar would be said to have devalued enough or exactly where the inflation resulting from devaluation was going to stop. No one can say how much suffering among the povo is considered enough.  So it has gone on for 20 years with annual renewals.

All insurance policies for life and for assets instantly become useless or the premiums shoot through the roof in efforts to stem the massive uncertainty. In the case of the economic war on Zimbabwe, most pension schemes were either abandoned altogether or the value of the monthly payments became less than the cost of a bus ride to collect it. In the case of Old Mutual and other insurance companies, assets from millions of policyholders were converted and transferred to sectors and forms beyond the reach or recognition of the policyholder while the policyholders were paid back less in real value than what they had put into the schemes. The policies were therefore unilaterally cancelled in violation of the original contracts between Old Mutual and its subscribers. These former subscribers are left to curse the Zimbabwe dollar for devaluing, forgetting that Old Mutual was part of the policy to devalue the currency in the first place.

There is a massive and desperate movement of both assets and people (human capital) from the perceived path of the war or sanctions to areas promoted and perceived (often wrongly) as safe havens.  

The assets and human capital moved away instantly become ‘loot’ and ‘refugees’ (human loot), which means that they are instantly devalued also. The chaos and uncertainty created in the targeted economy facilitates corruption, price-gauging, extortions, outright theft and violence. In the case of the war on the Zimbabwe economy, highly skilled and professional Zimbabweans become cleaners and farm labourers in Botswana, South Africa, Britain and all over Europe because they may not understand that in doing what they are doing they are making the devaluation spiral perpetual and self-sustaining. The massive externalisation of Zimbabwe’s goods, skills and minerals in the last 20 years has been criminal, catastrophic and self-perpetuating.

Those using the devaluation and inflation as excuses for profiteering come to expect the spiral to go on forever. Thus, in mid-July 2006, we were told by the Daily Mirror and other papers that many in the business sector rejected the Central Statistics Office’s finding that inflation in fact temporarily declined by more than eight percent in June 2006.

Those dictating, dominating or controlling the war pick and choose nuggets and gems from the ‘refugees’ and the ‘loot’ for their own benefit. They decide which individuals and portions to revalue and when, depending on their own strategic needs. The so-called brain drain from Zimbabwe escalated with deeper currency devaluations and many sectors of the British and other European economies saved billions of dollars by using Zimbabwe’s involuntary exports as cheap labour; the British Public Health system saving more than two billion Pounds Sterling in 2004 alone.

Our economists and technocrats are merely continuing the devaluation of Africa, the devaluation of African society and African assets, which began with slavery and colonialism; a continuing devaluation which has been intensified through the globalisation of the neo-liberalism.

The language describing the movement of human capital around the globe, for instance, helps to reveal this devaluation under global apartheid.  

White people seeking wealth and employment in African and other non-European places have consistently been defined as pioneers, discoverers, explorers, expatriates, missionaries, programme officers, professionals, consultants, experts, donors and investors.

Africans moving or forced to move to white countries have consistently been defined as slaves, illegal aliens, refugees, economic refugees and border jumpers.  

This is so, even when we know that the British public health service was able to save more than two billion Pounds Sterling in 2004 alone by poaching ready-trained medical professionals from Southern Africa; most of them Zimbabweans running away from the effects of sanctions.

This history must be taught.  

Sanctions Day in October 2019 must be used to intensify research into the realities of sanctions.