Zimbabwe Information Center in N

By Stanford G. Mukasa

Letter from America

September 3, 2007

Mugabe's fallacious arguments about sanctions

It is now fashionably trendy for Robert Mugabe and the ZANUPF cry babies to characteristically scream “sanctions” to explain virtually everything that has gone wrong in Zimbabwe today. The state media propaganda against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s visit to Australia was a perfect sing song for this bleat of the sanctions sheep in the ZANUPF circus.

There are no formal international sanctions against Zimbabwe. There is a targeted travel ban on top ZANUPF and government officials. The economic decline and its attendant hardships are a result of declining investments which have been caused directly by Mugabe and his regime. If this is what Mugabe calls sanctions then he must bear the responsibility for precipitating them.

Arguments by Mugabe, and surprisingly some analysts, that Britain, the United States and other western countries are behind what they call sanctions against Zimbabwe have no basis in fact and logic. It is surprising that such arguments continue to be peddled in face of the psychotic behavior of the Mugabe regime on, among other things, the economic mess in Zimbabwe.

A robust economy relies to a large extent on investments. People will put their money in countries where there is adequate protection for their investments. The role of governments around the world is to protect the investments in order to ensure that the investor gets a good or reasonable return on capital. Investments are pouring into countries like South Africa, Mozambique and Botswana, to mention a few, because the countries’ policies have taken rigorous measures to protect the investments.

In the case of Zimbabwe there are absolutely no guarantees that investments will be protected. The arbitrary and primitive intervention by Mugabe in the economy is the root cause of the drying up of investments. But Mugabe does not see it this way. He thinks the western governments are causing the loss of investments. What Mugabe and his apologists do not seem to get through their thick skulls is that governments have only themselves to blame when they make policies that create investment risks like is happening in Zimbabwe.

What sane person would bring investments into the economic jungle called Zimbabwe? Laws and activities by Mugabe and which are clearly hostile to a good investment climate are being enacted almost everyday. Starting from the farm invasion by Mugabe’s goons on the pretext of recovering what they called stolen land, Mugabe started a series of actions that clearly dried up investments in the country. It was not by coincidence that the Zimbabwean economy has been shrinking every year for the past seven years – which is roughly equal to the number of years Mugabe has effected policies hostile not only to a good investment environment but a democratic culture in which a society is governed by the rule of law, independent judiciary, freedom of the press and expression, the right to peacefully assemble to express one’s views and many others.

Mugabe’s interventionist policies into the economy have paralleled his repressive politics where Zimbabweans have now been deprived of virtually all their human rights.

Mugabe’s economic polices border on plans to take over businesses and parcel them to his cronies. They have created a circus like atmosphere. One day Mugabe orders prices to be slashed by half, and he sends his secret police to molest, harass, beat and arrest anybody who defies this edict. Then there is an economic backlash when consumer goods disappear from the shelves. This is followed the next day by a remarkable U turn that would make the conversion of St. Paul on his trip to Damascus a non event. Businesses are now allowed to increase prices. The next day’s circus acts by Bob Mugabe and His Wailers involve not cutting prices this time but freezing all salaries and wages. In other words, while, on one hand, prices will be allowed to go up there will, on the other hand, be no corresponding increase in wages. The obvious result is Zimbabweans will be impoverished further because there will be a surge in the cost of living spiral. Very soon consumer prices will more than double more frequently than ever before. With consumer goods out of reach because of both prohibitive prices and scarcity businesses will be faced with a shrinking market even for the scarce commodities. This is what happened during the depression in America in the 1930s. There was an overproduction of goods which was not matched by consumption because of depressed wages. In the case of Zimbabwe the overpricing of goods will, regardless of their availability, place them out of reach for most Zimbabweans.

This distortion of the economy as a result of ill-advised policies are the essence of what Mugabe calls sanctions. He tries to shift blame from himself to the West. The problem is Mugabe is pointing his finger at the wrong cause for what he has mislabeled sanctions. One wise man used to say when a person points a finger he or she should take a close look at where the rest of the fingers are pointing.

But in addition to creating conditions for what he calls sanctions from West Mugabe has also created conditions for an uprising by the masses. Political observers, historians and economists as well as Mugabe’s own security intelligence chiefs are for the most part agreed that the situation in Zimbabwe is now like a tinderbox, and that a spark is all that is now needed to set the country into an inferno.

And the question that has persistently been raised is what last straw will break the camel’s back? Or, what outrageous act or acts by Mugabe will finally be the spark that will set off the country into a blaze of popular unrest?

It has been seven years now since conditions in Zimbabwe took a plunge, leading to an economy that is in free fall today. Each successive year predictions have been made that this is going to be the year people will stage a spectacular uprising against Mugabe. Demonstrations so far have failed to attract the hundreds of thousands of people needed to effectively push Mugabe out of office.

Some people have given up on the idea of a mass uprising, arguing that Zimbabweans are too easily intimidated, are too scared and too hungry to ever muster the strength and courage to demonstrate in thousands against Mugabe

A few years ago a Zimbabwean analyst discussed why Zimbabweans are docile in face of daily, barbaric and outrageous acts by the Mugabe regime. His explanation was what he called the Zimbabwean dynamic. This meant that Zimbabweans, while not accepting their conditions , are nevertheless now resigned to their fate. He said Zimbabweans believe things will happen when they happen. According to this view, Zimbabweans have found it futile to mass demonstrate or to try to make projections as to when their oppressive conditions will end.

There are, however, some compelling reasons that support the notion of the Zimbabwe dynamic. These are the economy and Mugabe ‘s age. The perception here is that the economy will ultimately bring Mugabe down. Many political economists are agreed that no leader can survive a hyperinflation and an economy that has shrunk by over 40 percent for seven years in a row as that of Zimbabwe. There are even more optimistic predictions that Mugabe will be gone either by the end of this year or in the course of next year.

At the same time Mugabe is now nearly 84 years old. While his health is a state secret there are reports that age is catching up with him. He is a geriatric and is in a state of degenerative atrophy. This means anything can happen to him anytime. Twenty nine years ago the 89- year- old president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, went to Mombasa for a working holiday. On August 22, 1978, Kenyans woke up to the news that Kenyatta had died peacefully at 3 : 30 that morning. Mugabe may consider himself superhuman. He may feel confident that he is well protected by the army and his youth militia thugs. But he cannot conquer death nor the economy.

But while the Zimbabwean dynamic has these two persuasive arguments for mass inaction there is an equally compelling argument for Zimbabweans not sit back on their laurels and just wait for things to happen on their own. Some Zimbabweans had pinned their hopes on the Thabo Mbeki-mediated talks between ZANUPF and MDC. They had also hoped that the recently concluded SADC heads of state summit in Lusaka would yield some practical strategies for resolving the Zimbabwean problem once and for all.

They were disappointed because the SADC summit yielded nothing of substance by way of resolving the Zimbabwean crisis.

If the late US president John F Kennedy was alive today and speaking to the Zimbabweans he would probably say. “Ask not what SADC or Thabo Mbeki can do for you but ask what you can do to free yourself from the oppressive regime of Robert Mugabe and ZANUPF.”

And if the late Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole was alive today he would say to the Zimbabweans: “We are our own liberators.”

In the aftermath of the inaction by SADC at their meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, recently this is the message that must surely be sinking into the mindset of the Zimbabweans. The situation has not been helped by what many people see as Mbeki complicity with Mugabe rather than a true broker for a lasting solution.

Subsequent utterances by Zambia’s president Levy Mwanawasa, namely, he thought a lot of information about Mugabe was exaggerated ; and those by Mbeki that Zimbabwe is a sovereign country and should be left to solve its problems without outside intervention are blunt warnings to the Zimbabweans that they are on their own.

Time has come for the Zimbabweans to set aside any hope or expectation that SADC leaders will come like crusaders to save the embattled Zimbabweans from the tyranny of Mugabe. The only pressure SADC leaders will apply on Mugabe is a massage as one cartoonist once depicted. Pictures of Mugabe and other SADC leaders laughing their lungs out during a photo opportunity at the recent Lusaka conference were very revealing about Mugabe’s cozy relations with other presidents in the region. It did not take a great deal of imagination to understand that the SADC leaders put a premium on their relationship with Mugabe over and above anything else.

It should therefore not surprise anyone that as the SADC leaders were flirting with Mugabe Zimbabwe continued to be a hell house for the opposition movement. Mugabe’s own police, army and thugs continued to beat, torture and harass opposition members. One member of the opposition, Luke Tamborinyoka, has revealed in detail the absolutely horrid conditions he and his colleagues were subjected to while in Mugabe’s jails. Mugabe’s thugs beat peaceful demonstrators under the very noses of the SADC leaders who chose to look the other way.

Mugabe’s cruel and evil acts of provocation are inflicting a heavy toll on the Zimbabweans. Human rights organizations have documented 25,000 incidences of human rights violations inflicted on the Zimbabweans by Mugabe regime in the past six years. This amounts to over 4,000 violations every year, or 347 violations every month, or 12 violations a day. In other words, every single day for the past six year s there have been about 12 violations of people’s basic human rights in Zimbabwe! For example, Mugabe’s selective application of POSA was very much in evidence when members of the opposition who tried to demonstrate peacefully were routinely beaten by Mugabe’s police and thugs. Yet the very same police joined the pro Mugabe demonstration by the so called war veterans. Even Mugabe took the occasion to address the rally.

When Equatorial Guinea’s dictator visited Zimbabwe Mugabe’s thugs forced unwilling Zimbabweans to go to the airport. Those who refused to go were thoroughly assaulted.

The question for Zimbabweans is : Will they just sit and see their basic human rights being callously eroded? Or will they overcome their fear and confront Mugabe through massive acts of civil disobedience?