THE US’ indication that it intends to renew its sanctions on Zimbabwe and its hesitancy in embracing the re-engagement narrative should not be surprising.
This is especially so after reports of the involvement of the Democracy Institute in an attempt to unite opposition parties against ZANU PF in Cape Town last week.
The so-called Democracy Institute is strongly identified with National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – remember that American organisation keen on promoting regime change.
And one of the chief beneficiaries was the MDC.
We might be fooled by believing that the US’ reluctance to accept President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s new dispensation is because of their concern for democracy, good governance and respect for human rights.
All these high sounding platitudes are nothing but a red herring.
For, is there a greater democracy than giving the people one person one vote?
What human right beats the returning of land to indigenes so that they improve their standard of living?
Yet the so-called targeted sanctions, including economic strangulation through the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) have been instruments used by the US to punish the ZANU PF Government.
The reasons proffered for this are all lies.
The US, like the UK, is bitter that their kith and kin were vanquished by blacks in the then colonial Rhodesia in an armed struggle.
Thus former colonisers and their cousins are never comfortable with former liberation movements.
They feel governments led by former liberation movements, it doesn’t matter where, are difficult to persuade to be generous with their natural resources.
Instead, they feel at home with surrogate governments of their making whereby they will have freedom to exploit natural resources without any qualms.
That is why bandit movements like RENAMO were created to destabilise the FRELIMO government in Mozambique.
The disturbances in the western part of this country soon after independence were not by accident.
So, to expect the West to accept a ZANU PF Government, unreservedly, will be the height of damaging political naivety.
The US will continue to wave the sanctions stick because that’s the language the predominantly racist American polity would like to hear, especially against a product of a former liberation movement.
When then US Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker advised Congress to separate the Zimbabwean people from ZANU PF by making the ‘economy scream’, he meant what he said.
To him, sanctions would be the best way to rid the country of the former liberation movement.
The resilience of Zimbabweans, despite the sanctions, has seen the intervention of organisations determined to mobilise people against ZANU PF.
That is why we have seen NED coaching the MDC to wrestle power from ZANU PF through the ballot box.
With elections looming and the MDC as well as other mushrooming political parties in disarray, the Democracy Institute might have found it appropriate to sponsor a united front.
There is talk of spent forces like Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube and the apparent rudderless G40 cabal seeking refuge in such a coalition going by the name the Zimbabwe Alliance.
Maybe the US might like to be reminded that they got their independence after a bitter seven-year war against the British.
Their war cry was: ‘No Taxation Without Representation’. Ours was: ‘One Person One Vote’.
Both slogans induce the sanctity of sovereignty and the right to self-determination.
Thus it is paradoxical that the US can be seen to be begrudging a country that got its independence through an armed struggle.