Harare (New Ziana) –WHILE the United States of America (USA) and its Western allies are always quick to shoot down calls to remove sanctions that they slapped on Zimbabwe, they maintain them knowing very well that they do not work but hurt the very people they are supposed to assist.
In the case of the USA, the fidgeting at the din of calls for the removal of the punitive measures is also out of the knowledge that the process of lifting them is more odious than that of imposing them.
From Cuba, which has been telling the self-appointed policeman of the world that “it can’t breathe” since 1960 when it was placed in a chokehold, history has shown that sanctions do not work, but affect the ordinary people, Rhodesia in 1965, following the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by Ian Smith, South Africa under apartheid rule, and recently Russia, are testimonies to how sanctions do not work.
The embargoes have been known to create resilience and to harden the resolve of the people under sanctions as they devise strategies and means to get around them, in order to survive.
While defending their opposition to calls by other countries in the world to impose sanctions on South Africa to pressure the Boers to end apartheid, the US and UK leaders argued that the embargo would hurt the ordinary people that the sanctions were meant to assist.
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher described sanctions and disinvestment from South Africa as “the way of poverty, starvation and destroying the hopes of the very people-all of them-whom you wish to help.”
Her then Foreign Secretary, John Major, said disinvestment would “feed white consciences outside South Africa, not the black bellies within it.”
In 1986, former US President Ronald Reagan vetoed a Bill co-sponsored by his Republican party and the Democrats to impose sanctions on South Africa. He argued that they would hurt mostly the ordinary people.
After Congress overrode his veto, Reagan lamented the decision, again shedding crocodile tears for the impoverished black people, who he insisted would bear the brunt of the sanctions.
“I deeply regret that Congress has seen it fit to override my veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Sanctions Act of 1986,” he said.
“Punitive sanctions, I believe, are not the best course of action; they hurt the very people they are intended to help. My hope is that these punitive sanctions do not lead to more violence and more repression. Our administration will, nevertheless, implement the law. It must be recognised, however, that this will not solve the serious problems that plague that country. The United States must also move forward with positive measures to encourage peaceful change and advance the cause of democracy in South Africa.”
Also noteworthy is that it was only on South Africa that the US imposed punitive sanctions and was able to remove them smoothly after the conditions for which they were imposed were met, although that is a subject of another debate.
What is certain is that while the process of imposing sanctions on a country is simple and is usually driven by the heat of the moment, it takes a long time to have them removed since the pressure of introducing them would have eased and no one would still be interested in pursuing their annulment.
The case of former South African President Nelson Mandela is a good example, as, even after the apartheid regime ended and he was elected President in 1994, together with other members of his African National Congress, he remained on the US list of “terrorists” and thus under travel restrictions until 2008.
It took former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, to declare in April 2008, that it was about time that Congress lifted those restrictions, as the US otherwise had “excellent relations with South Africa”.
“It is frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterparts-the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader, Nelson Mandela,” she said.
In July 2008, President George Bush signed a Bill into law that lifted the travel restrictions, about nine years after Mandela had left office and four years after he announced that he was retiring from public life.
While some people may want to look for deeper reasons for the US to keep Mandela on the list of “terrorists”, the simple answer cites bureaucratic oversight as an explanation.
The case of South Africa also shows that had it not been for the international outcry over the in injustices that were occurring in that country, the US and the UK would not have sanctioned the Boers, because of their European ancestry.
It therefore goes without saying that while hiding behind the smokescreen of democracy and human rights violations, the US in particular, and the West to an extent, imposes sanctions on countries that would have threatened both its economic and political interests.
Economic interests centering around American and Western conglomerates and private businesses, while political interests centre on preventing the spread of Russian and Chinese influence around the world.
A small country surrounded on all sides by jellyfish and shark-infested waters, the Cuban economy should by now have collapsed and the government fallen but instead, the tiny island nation has been able to withstand the stranglehold.
William LeoGrande, a professor of Government and former dean of the American University School of Public Affairs, summarised that the embargo against Cuba is the “oldest and most comprehensive US economic sanctions against any country in the world” imposed over half a century ago.
According to LeoGrande, “the embargo has never been effective at achieving its principal purpose: forcing out of powerCuba’s revolutionary government or bending it to Washington’s will.”
Since 1998, the US has imposed economic sanctions on more than 20 countries and, according to Daniel Griswold, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Centre at the George Mason University, these restrictive measures failed to change the behaviours of sanctioned countries.
They have instead, barred American companies from economic opportunities, and harmed the poorest people in the countries under sanctions, argues Griswold.
US sanctions include ban on arms-related exports, controls over dual-use technology exports, restrictions on economic assistance, financial restrictions requiring it to oppose loans by the World Bank and other financial institutions, waiving diplomatic immunity to allow families of terrorist victims to file for civil damages in US courts.
As at 2020, countries under US sanctions included Afghanistan, Belarus, Bolivia, Cambodia, China, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Laos, Libya, Nicaragua, North Korea, Palestine, Russia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe.
Agencies that the US government uses to implement the sanctions include the Bureau of Industry and Security, the Directorate of Defence Trade Controls, Office of Foreign Assets Control, US Customs and Border Protection, US Department of Commerce (Export Administration Regulations), US Departments of Defence, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice and Treasury.
Several laws delegate embargo power to the US President including the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and the Export Administration Act of 1979 while several others specifically prohibit trade with certain countries such as the Cuban Assets Control Regulations of 1963, Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 and the Zimbabwe Economic Recovery and Democracy Act of 2001.
In the case of Zimbabwe, the small Southern African country is being punished for daring to challenge American and Western hegemony by forcibly taking away prime agricultural land from their minority kith and kin and redistributing it to the previously dispossessed, disinherited and disenfranchised black majority.
New Ziana
