Davet Muzwidzwa

SANCTIONS are economic penalties, such as blockades, stoppage of trade and financial transactions as well as savouring diplomatic relations, measures which are imposed upon a targeted country to force it to comply with the dictates of another country or organisation imposing its will.
Zimbabwe has endured a cocktail of sanctions for over a decade now.
There are worse countries than Zimbabwe in the world in all governance issues that are treated as darlings of the ‘world’.
No matter what crimes they commit, they remain darlings of the ‘world’.
What therefore is the crime that Zimbabwe committed that made the so-called civilised world sentence thousands if not hundreds of thousands of children, women and other vulnerable citizens by creating harsh conditions for survival? Children had difficulties getting adequate drugs and education, HIV and AIDS patients lost their lives failing to access ARVs.
Unprecedented shortages of food, clean water and shelter affected almost all Zimbabweans except the rich.
What crime did all these people commit that warranted the meting of such a harsh verdict by the civilised world?
The only crime Zimbabweans committed was to be heirs of this land between the Zambezi and the Limpopo.
This land was called the ABZU in the Sumerian documents where God traversed and took rest from the busy schedule of developing life on earth. Civilisation started here.
The sticking point being that God had known that he would like to take rest in this location and blessed it with a climate second to none.
God Loved the ABZU (Zimbabwe) so much that he blessed it with all the precious stones of the earth; diamonds, gold, rubies, amazonite, kayanite, emerald you name it.
God blessed Zimbabwe with industrial minerals because the first human worker was developed in Zimbabwe, iron, asbestos, manganese, copper, limestone, nickel, gas, oil, coal and many others.
Zimbabwe has the highest per-capita mineral potential in the world.
In real terms, God did not favour Israel in any way.
God favoured Zimbabwe beyond measurable comprehension.
That is your crime Zimbabwe.
You have what the whole world wants.
Zimbabwe belongs to the African continent which is a blessed continent because according to ancient knowledge supported by science life began in Africa precisely at Mara (Mwari) Island in Lake Victoria (Nolubaale) surrounded by the land known then and now as Tanganyika.
It is therefore no surprise why God favoured the whole of Africa with riches. Thus it can be seen that other regions who were given their adequate share are overwhelmed with envy.
They wish they were Africans in general and Zimbabweans in particular. Imagine for a moment that the land called Zimbabwe belonged to the Germans, British, French, Americans or Russians, would any other nationality dare colonise it?
One cannot contemplate how many wars would have been fought in defence of such territory.
No one would be allowed to poke a nose into the affair of this country.
The same goes to imagining Africa being Europe, all the nonsense taking place in Africa, like civil wars, disease and sanctions would not be even part of the vocabulary.
Zimbabwe is paying the price for being a rich country whose wealth is a rare gift from God that attracts attention.
The capitalism of this world was designed to succeed by incorporating the riches of Africa.
Capitalism created the partition of Africa and the subsequent colonisation of Zimbabwe.
Many missionaries and explorers were sent to Zimbabwe during colonisation process than many parts of Africa.
They colonised the minerals, the land, the people and the religion.
As you would recall, Cecil John Rhodes the brutal colonialist is buried at Mabweadziva/Njelele, the most sacred place on earth, where our God drank the fresh water of the caves before talking to his people.
While Rhodes died in South Africa, he demanded to be buried at this most sacred shrine so as to continue colonising Zimbabwe the land of God even in his grave.
This goes to show the determination of Rhodes’s kind to grab from Zimbabweans a chunk of the fortunes bequeathed on the heirs of Zimbabwe by God.
Now some Zimbabweans have succumbed to the lethal injection called sanctions and begin to feel that maybe they are wrong to defend their heritage. Some of the Zimbabweans are beginning to think that perhaps sharing with the greedy ones will bring sanity, not at all.
To the contrary, they will take everything and leave for us only deep scars on the land as landmarks and evidence that Zimbabwe was indeed endowed with riches from God.
The story of the camel that requested to put the nose in the house, then the head, then the shoulders until the whole body was in the house is a case in point. When the whole camel was in the house, it kicked out the owner of the house so that it could sleep comfortably.
Sanctions are some form of painful inducement to allow the camel to put the head in the house.
Once that happens, the rest of the processes follow, until the owner of the heritage is kicked out.
Zimbabweans must not be scared about sanctions because sometimes, they hurt the country imposing them more than they hurt the targeted country.
It is possible that the economic sanctions imposed by Britain and America may be hurting these countries more than they are hurting Zimbabwe.
Only that they may be smart enough not to show the world that they are being hurt by the sanctions they imposed.
Germany was the first to acknowledge that the sanctions imposed on Russia were hurting her more.
Zimbabweans must be positive about sanctions because those countries that imposed them are also punishing themselves.
This is the boomerang effect of sanctions.
You throw the sanctions to a targeted country, like a boomerang they swing back to the thrower and hit him hard .
The only way to reduce the embarrassment now for the sanctioning countries would be to influence the ZANU PF Congress in December so that a team of preferred individuals can get influential positions.
If that happens, they can swiftly remove the sanctions and start benefiting from the spoils.
Zimbabweans should be positive about sanctions because they create innovativeness in an economy.
A woman who needs a child will get pregnant knowing very well that there are nine months of pain and endurance.
At the end of nine months there is a very painful process called giving-birth. This process is so painful and sometimes may end up in operation or even death.
A woman seeking a child is aware of all these dangers, but she still seeks pregnancy.
The uniqueness of this woman is that she is fully aware of the consequences, but she is positive about the situation.
Zimbabweans must be positive if we are to endure the sanctions and allow the boomerang effect to take place.
Yes sanctions hurt, but there are positive outcomes as well.
Under sanctions, the Rhodesian regime looked inward and grew domestic infrastructure.
We are on course to doing the same, but it takes a bit of time due to the source of sanctions.
For a layman, Zimbabwe has grown faster under sanctions as seen by amount of cars on our roads, new suburbs sprouting and other indicators such as tobacco output.
Homegrown solutions are sustainable in tough times.