By Dr Tafataona Mahoso 

‘KNOWLEDGEABLE IGNORANCE’ refers to information spread by highly schooled persons who are, however, so badly educated that they are incapable of connecting obviously linked factors or stories.  

The effect is that what they say and conclude sounds knowledgeable and impressive because the person holds high qualifications or because he or she is good at using the latest and fastest technology to spread the partial, false and clearly disempowering information.

The term ‘knowledgeable ignorance’ was first made popular in describing paper-qualified economists who did not bother studying or understanding the real economy in which the majority of people of the world must derive their livelihoods.

Explaining the sanctions on Zimbabwe

Sanctions must be explained in terms of their type as well as purpose.  

The regime change propagandists have deliberately confused the current illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe with the UN mandatory sanctions on Rhodesia and South Africa during UDI and apartheid respectively.

The sanctions on Rhodesia and SA were different because they were wanted and requested by liberation movements which were anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist but which had no means to impose or enforce any sanctions.  

The same imperialist and colonialist powers who were fighting the liberation movements also controlled the means of enforcing or busting the same sanctions in order to protect the white interest in UDI and apartheid.

They were also the main beneficiaries of the regimes and the companies which were supposed to be sanctioned.  

This means that, at best, Britain, the US, the European community and their allies were in a conflict of interest situation when it came to imposing sanctions on Rhodesia and SA.  

This means the sanctions against Rhodesia and SA, though perfectly legal and mandatory in terms of international law (the UN), were adopted by the UK, the US and some EC countries only for public relations purposes. 

This means that outside Rhodesia and SA, the multinational corporations which did the most to defeat those same legal and mandatory sanctions were also based in Britain, the US and Europe.  

These companies included Mobil Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum and Union Carbide, among others.

Unlike the sanctions on Rhodesia and SA, those imposed on Zimbabwe, beginning in the year 2000, were first required by the British Government which asked for the help of the US Government.  

The two governments then approached the EU for its co-operation.  

These forces, together, agreed to instigate the MDC together with the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and all the other NGOs they had helped to sponsor and fund in Zimbabwe to demand for Western sanctions in the name of the people of Zimbabwe.  

But they did not represent the Zimbabwean people.

In other words, the people of Zimbabwe did not want sanctions precisely because their relationship with the African land reclamation movement in Zimbabwe was not like their colonial relationship with the Rhodesian and apartheid regimes.  

The sanctions were wanted by the Western powers and the Rhodesian lobby who opposed the African land reclamation movement and wanted to reverse it; the powers and forces who opposed Zimbabwe’s involvement in stopping Western-sponsored genocide in the DRC; and the forces and powers who saw the Third Chimurenga as a total negation of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) which the Government of Zimbabwe had reluctantly adopted in 1990 and abandoned by April 2001.

The regime change lobby’s efforts to equate the sanctions on Rhodesia and SA with those against Zimbabwe is meant to tarnish the image of Zimbabwe and condemn land reform as synonymous with UDI and apartheid.  

It is also meant to suggest that the Third Chimurenga will end just like UDI and apartheid.

The sanctions against Zimbabwe are wanted by the very same Western powers and agencies who possess the means to implement and enforce them. 

And those countries are all white.

As such, the sanctions should be seen as an instrument of neo-liberal regime change and mass torture as defined by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. 

Zimbabweans will defeat the sanctions only after examining, understanding and fighting them in a scientific, systematic and strategic manner.

The story which the enlarged media sector has suppressed was reported briefly and obliquely in 2010 and 2013 in The Financial Gazette and The Herald, respectively. 

On June 3 2010,On June 3 2010, The Financial Gazette carried US Ambassador Charles Ray’s letter of complaint which said in part:

“One can hardly go a day in Zimbabwe without the topic of sanctions creeping – no, barging – into the conversation.  

I have often remarked that this is a topic that I find little reason to dwell on and, usually, avoid doing so.  

It is a non-issue that has lots of billowing smoke, but little flame.  

It is, however, such a pervasive topic, I feel I must attempt to offer some input.”

So, when the next US Ambassador David Bruce Wharton arrived in Zimbabwe to replace Charles Ray, he really thought the ‘chema’ economy headed by USAID in this country would have succeeded in wiping clean the illegal sanctions slate, so that Wharton could reset the clock and pretend that no harm has been done or is being done. 

He thought that the bright lights of Western criminal humanitarianism would have made Zimbabweans succumb to terror by forgetting.

His arrival was preceded by a vigorous advertising campaign on Star FM Radio where the Ambassador sought to portray himself and his wife as ordinary folk who identified with the povo of Zimbabwe, especially since Wharton and his wife were also small land-holders in the State of Virginia.  

He wanted the people of Zimbabwe to know that he too valued land possession as much as vana vevhu also valued the possession of their land in Zimbabwe.  

But the land in the US was obtained through genocide against the natives there.

The underlying message was that the US Ambassador did not approve of the way in which the Government of Zimbabwe had enabled the same vana vevhu to repossess that land, therefore, the illegal Anglo-Saxon sanctions, including the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) of the US would not be lifted.

It is most significant that the demonstrations against the US Ambassador took place in Manicaland.  

It is most significant that the demonstrators clearly pointed out that sanctions had the effect of destroying the local communities’ ability to help themselves, to develop themselves.  

It is significant that the Financial Gazette did not invite Zimbabwean responses to Ray’s letter.  

It is profound that, to this day, the Financial Gazette has not bothered to research objectively the sanctions story along the lines other countries have documented experiences of ordinary people under sanctions.

It is indeed profound that, as late as February 28 2019, the Daily News would seek out the sanctions deniers such as Arthur Mutambara whom it cited as saying: “Stop ranting against sanctions,” without asking him what his investment is in the sanctions and without asking how a full Professor, who is supposed to be a scientist, can suddenly and casually shed his scientific outlook on everything as if science was just a skin which a snake can just shed without stopping to think twice.  

What scientific studies of sanctions has this Professor of robotics done to be able to speak like that?

Western sanctions were responsible for the deaths of 600 000 Iraqi children between 1991 and 2003, mostly through the destruction of health services and the deterioration of infrastructure for water and sanitation.

We saw similar destruction and deterioration here prior to Cyclone Idai.