Despite the Zimbabwean government’s so-called “reengagement with the West” over the past six years, the US government (which our government claims to be reengaging) will not support the call for the African Development Bank to cancel and restructure Zimbabwe’s sovereign debt as leverage for the Zim government to borrow US$3.5 billion, to pay white farmers.
The US, with the second-largest vote in the AfDB, states that it will not support the restructuring of Zimbabwean debt, until the Zimbabwean government fulfills its ZDERA reforms.
These reforms include implementing the SADC Tribunal ruling, which essentially requires the reversal of land reform (not compensation of white farmers) and government reform to level the electoral playing field by rectifying electoral laws while under sanctions, to provide the opposition with a fair advantage.
While our government has failed to convince the US, to vote for debt cancellation to enable them to borrow money to pay white farmers. Proponents of reengagement would like us to believe that they are the ones who convinced PRIVATE apartheid and imperialist banks, to grant loans to government and restore corresponding banking relationships.
This is despite these banks only beginning to grant loans seven months after ZASM launched its case against the same banks, OFAC, the US President and US leaders in South African courts, and one week after the US President responded to the same court papers.
The bottomline is, reengagement entails our government pleading with former colonizers to forgive it for decolonizing and sequestrating stolen land. But Haiti and Guatemala are prime examples of countries that reengaged with the West, returned the land they nationalized and paid compensation, but still the west has not forgiven them 50 to 203 years later respectively, because the West does not forgive runaway slaves who try to change Discovery Law by taking back native land.
What kind of revolutionary politicians, turn into reengagers and assimilators (Africans who want to assimilate into colonial systems) while forgetting this basic history?
Albeit, what we do know is that, in a US-created multilateral rules-based system, legal action and multilateralism are much more effective at fighting a desperate US, seeking to maintain its legitimacy and the illusion of the Western rules-based system.
This is why ZASM lobbied the UNHRC to come and denounce sanctions, which prompted the US Congress to conduct an impact assessment of sanctions on health and human rights in Zimbabwe; leading to ZASM suing the US government, OFAC and banks domiciled in SA. These actions have yielded faster results than brown-nosing reengagement.
Even though our own government has been unsupportive of our legal action, our case remains the most effective sanctions counter to date, that has also aided in restoring the government’s statute and legitimacy.
As a result, even if the government dislikes our success where they have failed, they have no choice but to support the legal case if they want a legal ruling that will outlaw the implementation of illegal sanctions by racist banks in our largest trading partner in future.
Our court case will not only outlaw the use of illegal sanctions but also grant our government the right to seek damages from any bank or company that implements illegal sanctions in South Africa, in the future.
This precedent can then be taken across the continent by the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) into other African nations and BRICS, to establish international custom against sanctions, that can subsequently be presented to the UN and WTO as international law on sanctions.
If our government officials choose to miss this opportunity to create African case law and international customs against sanctions, then they must be prepared to follow the path of Haiti, Guatemala, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Libya and stop pretending that they oppose sanctions.
By Rutendo Matinyarare, Chairman of ZASM and Founder of Frontline Strat Marketing Consultancy.
