Tuesday, May 07, 2013

United States Must Engage Zimbabwe In Good Faith

US must engage in good faith

Tuesday, 07 May 2013 00:00

THE United States, which purports to be a superpower, must be man enough and look us in the eye on the issue of its illegal economic sanctions regime.

Our country and Government had no quarrel with the US, which needlessly bought into a bilateral dispute that flared between Harare and London in November 1997.

It is a fact that the sanctions are illegal as they were imposed outside the purview of the United Nations with a view to subvert popular democracy in Zimbabwe.

Over the past few weeks, Washington dispatched several envoys among them former ambassador to the UN Mr Andrew Young, who was accompanied by deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs Reuben Brigety; as well as Reverend Jesse Jackson, who all underscored Washington’s resolve to build bridges.

In the wake of those visits the US trimmed its sanctions list by first removing two banks, Agribank and the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe, from the sanctions list.

It followed this up last week by removing eight individuals and entities from the list, which was again mere tokenism, given that six of the individuals are dead.

Thus the US gesture can be described as contemptuous and condescending.

The six are dead and from their graves do not give a hoot whether they are on the sanctions list or not.

The real sanctions that we want to see gone affect the living and these are manifest in the so-called Zimbabwe Transition to Democracy and Economic Recovery Act that succeeded Zdera and which still exists to deny us lines of credit from multilateral lending institutions to which we are a member.

It is these same sanctions that have empowered the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to play the pirate by intercepting revenue accruing from trade by Zimbabwean companies among them the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe, which lost over US$30million in revenue and lately Olivine Industries, whose US$2million was also intercepted by Ofac.

Olivine Industries, which is experiencing severe financial problems due to capital constraints, had secured a US$2 million loan from the PTA Bank to capitalise but lost the money because its majority shareholder, the Industrial Development Corporation, is on the US sanctions list.

The same Ofac is also holding the IDC’s US$40 000 subscriptions to the Sadc Development Finance Sector.

IDC owns 51 percent in Olivine, with the remainder being owned by Aico Africa Ltd.

And only recently, at the Dubai Diamond Conference, the US launched a fresh bid to usurp the powers of the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme to impose further sanctions on Zimbabwean gems, a move that was shot down by delegates .

These are just a few examples to show that the US mantra that sanctions are targeted at Zanu-PF leaders are hogwash that should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves.

So for the US to extend a hand of conciliation while the other is hitting us below the belt is the height of hypocrisy.

Let us approach re-engagement with the honesty and maturity it requires.

We notice Washington harps about being desirous of seeing free, fair and credible harmonised elections in Zimbabwe, yet it is keen to maintain its sanctions regime that was designed to influence voting patterns in favour of the MDC formations, principally MDC-T.

These half-hearted, conceited moves are an insult to our collective intelligence.
We are a thinking people.

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