So the story of sanctions has been part of our political narrative for eleven years now. It has become permanent in any agenda to do with Zimbabwe. It dominated all our political campaigns over the years. It has become an excuse for not doing what is right. It is justification for laziness by elected leaders, inefficiency and an exposé of a dependent mindset that clamours for sovereignty and yet suffers a dearth of innovation even when autonomy lay bare in its hands.
By Tapiwa Gomo
These combined, unveil a fertile and yet fetid theatre for corruption shielded by excuse of sanctions. As this soap opera of deception slowly unfolds, it turns out Zimbabweans are worse sufferers and the biggest losers, not from the direct effects of targeted sanctions, but the devious practices of our own.
If blame has to be apportioned to EU or the USA, it is not because sanctions had a direct negative impact on ordinary citizens as has been religiously pandered.
It is because the EU and USA donated a good reason to justify laziness, inefficiency and corruption.
Let’s rewind to February 18 2002 when the European Union imposed sanctions on selected Zanu PF people, who the EU judged to be responsible for the 2002 elections political violence, violations of human rights, and for preventing the holding of free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. The sanctions included among others, travel bans to Europe.
That marked the beginning of strained relationship between Harare and Brussels which today is blamed for poor service delivery in the country. For a political cabal that lost the plot on managing the country, they instinctively grabbed the opportunity to distract our attention from their nebulous capabilities. Last week around at 0400 AM, we woke up to social media updates screaming that most parts of Harare did not have water and electricity. Over the past eleven years we have been fed to the rhetoric that poor service delivery was because of sanctions. Sanctions only started in 2002, but Harare water woes can be traced back to the early 1990s. For Bulawayo and other towns it goes as far back as we cannot remember anymore. The bursting of water and sewage pipes has been ongoing since the late 1980s and has nothing to do with sanctions. Shortage of electricity too is by far older than the MDC.
Let’s for once suppose that sanctions had a role to play in the deterioration of service delivery in the country. Does it mean that the equipment and chemicals needed to make Morton Jaffray Water Treatment and Prince Edward Water treatment Plants can only be procured from Europe and USA only? China is known to have among the leading manufacturersand suppliers of water treatment plants equipment in the world. Sadly our look East policy missed that as it focused on ensuring that there are more Chinese suits in the country to spite the British.
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Japan too has become one of the leading producers of electrical energy which is the mainstay behind its recent economic growth. Even after shutting down of the Fukushima nuclear power plants, Japan is still sufficiently meeting its national energy requirements. Unlike us, Japan lacks significant reserves of coal and they depend on imports, but by 1950 coal supplied half of Japan’s energy needs, hydroelectricity one-third, and oil the rest. By 2013, Japan depends heavily on imported fossil fuels to meet its energy demand. Unlike most other industrial countries, Japan doesn’t have a single national grid but instead has separate eastern and western grids. By the way Japan is not in Europe and we did not need to plead for the removal of sanctions to renew our electrical energy production.
We do not need lifting of sanctions to approach Japan to assist with replacing the archival equipment called turbines that lie almost lifeless under the bridge of Lake Kariba and the unreliable Hwange Thermal Power Station. Technology has moved on and those giant relics need to be rested and replaced with latest machines the world has to offer.
We have been marinated in the rhetoric of managing poverty. We are now impaired from seeing the possibilities. Fellow Zimbabweans, we do not lack the means, but we are overwhelmed by unfounded excuses, a propaganda motivated by inefficiency – one that blinds the mind and do not be fooled it is not about sanctions. We could have done better even with fully fledged sanctions in place. What can stop us from revitalizing our utilities, when we consider that diamonds, one of the many endowments – can sustain these two projects before we consider other sources of income? Marange is the largest diamond producing project in the world, estimated to produce 16,9 million carats in 2013 alone and home to the richest diamond deposit. In 2010, in one day, on August 11, buyers flew to Harare to buy diamond worth over 1,5 billion dollars. This is diamond only. We have not considered other raw materials. By the way the buyers of this diamond were not from Europe or USA, but largely from Asia. So again sanctions do not apply to our poverty, our behavior does.
Any strategy to revive the economy which does not consider revitalising the energy sector, water supply, waste management and other utilities is nothing more than a lie to the people. Any national economic strategy that does not outline how we use available resources to reboot our economy is also a lie to our generation and those to come. Any excuse that sanctions have hindered us from developing our people is another fib which does not deserve space in our lives. Europe is not a source of tomorrow. All things are happening in Asia.
