By Rutendo Matinyarare

THE UK and South African remittances to Zimbabwe by Zimbabweans in those Diasporas have become Zimbabwe’s biggest investment driver and sanctions-buster. 

In the last six months, Zimbabwe has received, from its citizens living abroad, about US$800 million officially from formal electronic remittances and over US$1 billion in cash crossing physically through the borders. These foreign currency inflows have, in turn, driven construction, real estate, mining, agriculture, retail and other economic activities that are fuelling Zimbabwe’s economic boom.

As a retaliation, the G7’s Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is threatening to grey list the South African financial system this October, for, among other things, not doing enough to curb cash transactions in its economy. 

According to the FATF 2021 Report, South Africa has continued to allow easy access to cash and this is fuelling crossborder remittances to countries like Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Somalia (all countries under US sanctions) and other SADC countries where that cash is fuelling terrorism. 

This, of course, is an illogical argument when considering that Zimbabwe and most SADC countries have no links to terrorism. 

Secondly, US dollars form almost 30 percent (US$2,1 trillion) of the world’s notes and 21 percent of those notes were printed between 2019 and now, but the FATF has never grey-listed the US financial system for producing too many dollar notes which everyone knows the US uses to finance terrorism for oil, the purchase of weapons from the US industrial military complex for terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. 

There is overwhelming evidence that the West is the biggest driver of terrorism, money laundering, drug trafficking (from the Opium Wars through to US control of Afghanistan’s opium fields and heroine trafficking, today) and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist States, like Israel which has been condemned by the UN for crimes against humanity upon Palestinian civilian men, women and children. 

In 1989, the US government was found guilty by the ICJ of funding and arming Contra bandits (terrorists) to murder innocent civilians in Nicaragua. 

And this is before we go into how the US government is said to have created Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabaab, Al Sunna in Mozambique and many other new terrorist organisations, to advance their geopolitical interests.

Albeit, we never saw the US being grey-listed for funding drug trafficking, terrorism and money laundering; neither

have we seen any other Western country being blacklisted for money laundering or organised crime, even after the West has caused every economic depression in the world, including the worst banking crash of 2008. 

The reason is simple. 

According to the book Treasury’s War: The Unleashing Of A New Era Of Financial Warfare written by former US Treasury Director of Counter Terrorism, Juan Zarate; FATF and its money laundering guidelines, were created by his team after 9/11 (while he was still in the US Treasury) as economic weapons to enable the US government to extend its illegal unilateral sanctions, extraterritorially, in a manner that chokes development in countries the US government doesn’t like or those that seek to control and process their own strategic resources to the detriment of US economic interests. 

It’s clear that these laws were never meant to stop organised crime, terrorism, money laundering or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction because if they were, the countries that manufacture weapons and currencies used by terrorists would be the first on the FATF list. 

More critically, the FATF is particularly irate with the South African FIC (Financial Intelligence Centre) for not creating enough transparency within the South African financial system by coercing lawyers, accountants and real estate agents in the Republic to expose beneficiaries of South African registered properties, trusts, special purpose vehicles, companies and juristic entities. 

This is something they desperately need to empower the white-controlled South African financial system, to target politically exposed Zimbabweans (non-white South Africans and other non-Western aligned Africans) or business people who use these financial vehicles innovatively to grow their businesses or to circumvent punishment without trial by illegal Western sanctions and anti-money laundering and counter terrorism laws (AMLCT) which are designed to destroy black competitors.

This again comes as an oxymoron when considering that trusts and tax havens were created by the same Western countries and most, if not all, tax havens are domicile in Western territories, for them to have opaque vehicles to easily launder their proceeds of predicate crimes (crimes which generate proceeds that then require money laundering to move gains to other jurisdictions) like slavery, apartheid, colonialism, tax evasion, transfer pricing, weapons trafficking, drug trafficking, human trafficking, stealing of oil and plunder from Third World exploitation. 

Be that as it may, the South African financial system is being forced to use its racial discriminatory culture and systems to block the rise of African competitors by arbitrarily denying them financial tools through the arbitrary application of unilateral sanctions or AMLCT laws. 

Notwithstanding, they face a stiff challenge from a legal case launched by the Zimbabwe Anti-Sanctions Movement (ZASM) in the South African Gauteng High Court in February. 

The ZASM case is designed to address discrimination in the financial global system by asking the South African courts to stop banks domicile in South Africa from violating human rights and breaching the South African Constitution by discriminately, arbitrarily, disproportionately and extrajudicially punishing innocent civilians (Zimbabweans or anyone else) by denying them the rights to enjoy banking services through the illegal implementation of unilateral sanctions, AMLCT laws or economic warfare, without trial or court orders, as they are doing with Zimbabwean citizens and the Guptas. 

This is a really important case aimed at stopping the racist banking practices of demanding private information from clients through KYC, and then using the information to persecute, segregate and discriminate  innovative or competitive black entrepreneurs and States that are competing with Western interests.

Complimenting the ZASM case is the June 2022 South African Equality Court order that Nedbank reopen Sekunjalo’s bank accounts, after the bank arbitrarily closed them without any court order, on the premise of managing reputational risk in line with FATF guidelines, after Sekunjalo was implicated in the Mpati Commission of Inquiry. 

These are critical cases in a country where apartheid banks continue to be above the law and entrenching white monopoly by deliberately curtailing the rise of black banks, black insurers, black miners, black energy providers, black companies and black industrialists through arbitrarily denying black and brown people banking licenses, loans, leverage, financial instruments, payment clearances or accounts to transact.

And now, our former colonisers are trying to use Western sanctions in tandem with FATF guidelines (endorsed by our Western-trained African bankers) to control financial flows to African countries through the biased application of these FATF’s AMLCT guidelines and regulations. These guidelines exclude undesired African competitors from the financial system, without trial. They are trying to destroy Africa’s competitiveness (in contravention of the universal bill of human rights and the South African constitution). It is , therefore, imperative that we, the oppressed Africans, fight this racist imperialist, financial warfare before the West destroys Africa’s competitiveness by continued manipulation of the global financial system.

More critically, our financial officers in Africa must stop recognising these imperialist Western financial weapons of oppression. These weapons of oppression are imposing the white-controlled apartheid (South African) banking system (the only African financial system the West see worthy of being a member of the 39-member G7, FATF) as overlord of African economies. 

Why would smart African bankers allow the imposition of unilateral rules made by a racist institution (FATF) formed in 1989, by the enemies of Africa (former slave masters, colonisers and erstwhile plunderers) at the deliberate exclusion of Africans, Asians and South Americans? 

Where is the logic in Africans joining or accepting the unilateral rules made by such a racist club of Anglo-Saxon terrorists who still continue to dispossess, starve and kill Africans for their oil, minerals and inheritance? 

Whose interests do our bankers think such an evil, racist institution of money launders and terrorist sponsors serves? 

Why would they only seek transparency and compliance to AMLCT from Third World countries? 

Remember, this is done while all Western countries advance their competitive advantage behind the veil of secrecy, innovation, murder, war, plunder, transfer pricing, under invoicing, tax evasion, organised crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking (slavery), primitive accumulation, money laundering, destroying competition and the maintenance of ownership of unjustly acquired wealth.