ONE would have thought that Zimbabweans would be united in their opposition to international sanctions, which were introduced more than 20 years ago to punish Zimbabwe for state sanctioned land invasions and human rights abuses.
There is, however, a small but powerful group that has grown rich off sanctions and has no interest in seeing them lifted.
That list includes members of the ruling Zanu PF party as well as members of the opposition, billionaire businessmen, cartels that have established monopoly power over certain segments of the Zimbabwean economy, banks and lobbyists. T
his astonishing claim comes not from Zimbabwe’s political opposition, but from the leader of Zanu PF Sandton branch, Advocate Simba Chitando, who earlier this year filed papers in the Gauteng High Court to declare US sanctions against Zimbabwe unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid.
Chitando is not alone in his views. When presented with initiatives that could create tens of thousands of jobs, foreign investors and banks say they are afraid of violating sanctions and incurring massive penalties.
“Many Zimbabwean cartels, no different from the opposition, profit from the arbitrarily imposed economic coercive sanctions on Zimbabwe. The restrictions are a fertile ground for corruption, exploitation, racketeering, and clandestine deals [that are] closed to the majority of Zimbabweans,” writes Chitando in a report that lays out the beneficiaries of sanctions.
The anti-sanctions case in the Gauteng High Court was brought by the Zimbabwe Anti-Sanctions Movement (ZASM) and argues that sanctions are inconsistent with the Africa Free Trade Agreement, to which South Africa is a signatory, and the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (Bippa) between SA and Zimbabwe.
Cited as respondents in the case are US President Joe Biden, the President of the US Senate, the Speaker of the House, Treasury Secretary and several US and South African banking groups. US banks cited in the case are Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.
Politically connected individuals have cornered key markets, not least of which is preferential access to hard currency via the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Access to scarce hard currency is a virtual guarantee of prosperity, and allows the beneficiaries to corner key markets in the economy.
The country’s opposition is also in on it, says Chitando: “Economic sanctions provide the opposition with a fettered economy, sieged by restrictions, which is the ideal breeding ground for public resentment to get votes. It is also a powerful tool for blackmail.
Sanctions relief in exchange for a vote into power. We know this because they told us. “We remember Tendai Biti [vice president of the opposition] threatening to ensure that ‘they [the government] won’t get a cent” from international financial institutions.”
A 2019 report by Zimbabwe’s ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade detailed the impact of these sanctions on the local economy, saying the restrictions suffocated Zimbabwe’s ability to meet its international financial obligations, while denying the country critical balance of payments support.
The removal of these sanctions would be a kiss of death for these nefarious characters, and foreign-owned banks that abet the sanction-based economy. It would mean the end of monopoly, the beginning of a market economy, transparency, increased taxes, and an open economy for the majority of Zimbabweans. — moneyweb.