By Abraham Mabvurira

FOR Zimbabwe, 2023 represents a new year, a new era, and a new beginning with, however, the same vision and struggle; the vision to achieve Vision 2030 and the struggle to continue building our beloved nation under the debilitating sanctions and the divide-and-rule tactics of the US and the West. 

Therefore, as citizens of this great country, let us psyche ourselves to work harder and smarter.

We must not be swayed by the divide-and-rule tactics of the West which is desperate for our resources and presently grasping at straws as the Asian tigers begin to dominate the world economy. 

The recent unprovoked and callous addition of more Zimbabwean citizens and their companies to the US sanctions list in December 2022 clearly shows how Uncle Sam is miffed by the progress that has so far been achieved by the Second Republic despite the great hindrance and stumbling block of Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA). 

The level of progress that Zimbabwe has achieved under the new dispensation has the West worried. Africans are being shown that success can be achieved — on our own terms.

From 2018, the West has witnessed a resilient Zimbabwe moving towards a bright and brilliant upper-middle class income society under the able leadership of Cde E.D. Mnangagwa.

The main intention of the sanctions is simply to under-develop victim countries and portray the leaders as failures while fomenting discontent among the citizens.

As correctly propounded by Rutendo Matinyarare, the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Anti-Sanctions Movement (ZASM), sanctions are “…a form of an illegal warfare which is mainly intended to cripple our economy, cripple access to capital, cripple technology exchange, cripple technology transfer and cripple our ability to rise up the learning curve and to learn to produce our own industrial products….”

What is critical, at the moment, for relevant authorities and progressive minds, is to explain to the current generation the nature of our curent struggle.

The masses, especially our young, should know the origin of these illegal sanctions and how they affect, and have affected, every facet of our lives.

They must know, our young, that we must survive and build our nation under the illegal unjustified sanctions, drawing lessons from other nations, such as Cuba. 

Those who avidly follow the history of this great nation, Zimbabwe, are aware that the masses were constantly, through gatherings known as pungwes, informed by the liberation fighters the reason for the struggle; its nature, aim and purpose. 

As a result, there was cohesion between the fighters and masses which made our liberation heroes, heroines and war collaborators fight the enemy successfully.

However, the enemy did not accept defeat and the white supremacists changed the offensive from direct confrontation to illegal economic sanctions as well as creating puppets and destabilisation.

With US illegal economic sanctions decimating economies across the world, the Americans cannot be teaching any country democracy.

Which Zimbabweans are they saving through unjustified sanctions?

The West is not fighting for Zimbabweans but to further their interests.

And they will not hesitate to trample on lives of the indigenes to get what they want; the blood and tears of the poor, the defenseless and innocent of the world does not move them.

To Uncle Sam and the West, the development trajectory that Zimbabwe has taken cannot go unchecked.

A united Zimbabwe, a united Africa, a united Russia and a united China are a menace. As a result they will not tire of using every trick in the book to sponsor violence, bioterrorism, terrorism, insurrection, man-made diseases, unnatural disasters as well as seeding violent white opposition parties clad in black faces to deceive the masses. The way America and the West are currently trying to divide and disintegrate Russia is what they successfully did to Africa years ago and yet they are still not satisfied with the current divisions they have sown.

Their illusions and warped worldview does not allow them to see that a united Zimbabwe, Africa, Russia or China are not a threat to global peace because we are peace-loving nations. 

None of the above nations has a barbaric history of imperialism. 

America and the West should act reasonably and do away with their paranoia — our desire for unity, to be a strong Zimbabwe, is purely for defensive purposes, economic progress and development, not to conquer any sovereign nation.