This year, the United Nations has imposed sanctions on Sudan and, most recently, on North Korea. The sanctions efforts were spearheaded by the United States and European imperialist powers. These countries also impose their own sanctions on countries targeted for “regime change” or that have otherwise run afoul of imperialism.
One of these countries is Zimbabwe. The United States and the European Union have placed sanctions on Zimbabwe
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Skyrocketing inflation over the last year has largely been a result of shortages caused by the sanctions. The sanctions limit the country’s supply of some essential goods, like petroleum and pharmaceuticals. In addition, they have harmed the government’s ability to get foreign currency, making it more difficult to purchase essential goods.
The international capitalist media has tried to pin the inflation plaguing Zimbabwe on President Robert Mugabe and the economic policies of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.
The U.S. and British governments are following a well-rehearsed destabilization script. Their campaign is remarkably similar to what was used in Iraq, Haiti, Panama, Nicaragua and wherever else the imperialists have sought to destabilize governments in preparation for their overthrow and replacement with puppet regimes.
The hostility stems first and foremost from the fact that Zimbabwe’s government has its origin in the armed struggle that ended the Western-backed racist, fascist settler regime.
Today, the propaganda campaign is focused on the allegation that ZANU-PF is corrupt and has “mishandled” the economy. They blame ZANU-PF’s land redistribution program as a primary cause. The program works to confiscate large-scale, white-owned commercial farmland and then redistribute it to the majority of landless Black war veterans living in the most desperate conditions. The white-owned land once constituted 70 percent of the country’s prime farmlands.
The white farmers were part of the super-rich tiny settler elite that dominated Rhodesia, the European colonial outpost, which was re-named Zimbabwe when Black majority rule was achieved following decades of armed struggle. Because the British government, the original colonizing force in the 19th century negotiated an end to the armed struggle and the establishment of Black majority rule, sectors of the old land-based ruling class retained their land and their fortunes.
Economic sanctions and the outside manipulation of the country’s money market have had a devastating impact.. Compounding the problems are opportunistic dealings by certain government bureaucrats and business people.
Although Zimbabwe’s economy is largely independent of foreign imperialist domination it is not a socialist economy. There is national capitalist bourgeoisie. A country like Zimbabwe, whether it has a socialist or capitalist economy, cannot really escape the effects of the world economy. The hostility of the imperialist countries and their near monopoly on credit and global trade networks has caused deep economic dislocation in Zimbabwe.
Similar economic crises occurred in Mexico in the 1980s because of opportunistic national bankers, and in the 1990s when “friendly” foreign imperialists like George Soros manipulated east Asian money markets.
In the case of Zimbabwe, the manipulation is meant to punish Zimbabwe for daring to begin to redress the legacy of colonialism with deeds and not just rhetoric.
Imperialists punish Zimbabwe
A recent interview with Mugabe in Harare’s Herald gives insight into the intended effect of the sanctions and the real goals of British and U.S. foreign policy.
Mugabe noted that while the imperialists are not taking outright military action against Zimbabwe, they are using their superior economic position to punish Zimbabwe.
He said, “Britain has been going around asking its allies not to continue the usual economic co-operation with us, in
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Until recently, Zimbabwe was part of the Commonwealth of Nations headed up by Britain. Despite this major deficiency, Zimbabwe had established trade ties and partnerships within this trade pact.
The sanctions against Zimbabwe have been portrayed as “smart sanctions” restricting the dealings and travel of Mugabe and other individuals in the government. Mugabe told the Herald, however, “[T]hey are really economic sanctions from the American Zimbabwe Democracy Act.”
The act was signed into law by President Bush in 2001. It purportedly aimed to hasten the “transition” to “democracy” in Zimbabwe. What it really wanted was “regime change” in Zimbabwe in order to open its markets to U.S. imperialists and other foreign investors. The U.S. government wants to control Zimbabwe’s economic and political development in a neo-colonial manner.
To this end, Bush reserved full authority in the act to dictate how and when Zimbabwe should meet foreign financial obligations.
Bush said, “Section 4(c) of the Act purports to direct the executive branch to oppose and vote against the extension of loans or the cancellation of debt in international financial institutions unless and until I make a certification or national interest determination. … I will construe the provision as being subject to my exclusive authority to negotiate or vote in international financial institutions.”
These international financial institutions are the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other key multilateral development banks, including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the African Development Bank. The banks have saddled Zimbabwe and other African nations working to overcome the yoke of colonial rule with massive debt.
They are all firmly controlled by imperialism. For example, the World Bank is headed by former U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz. They are structured and oriented to ensure that Zimbabwe and other developing countries cannot survive without bowing to imperialism’s economic and political dictates.
MDC works with imperialists
The imperialists’ economic embargo on Zimbabwe is not limited to government figures or institutions. It reaches the country’s entire economy, greatly affecting its economic health.
The Paris Club—a self-described “group of official creditors whose role is to find co-coordinated and sustainable solutions to the payment difficulties experienced by debtor nations”—recently demanded that Zimbabwe normalize its relations with the IMF and World Bank in order to qualify for debt forgiveness. The Paris Club is really a body run and controlled by the imperialist countries to reinforce their economic dictates.
The sanctions were supported by Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. The MDC postures as a genuine “democratic alternative” to ZANU-PF, but it is not. It represents the comprador section of Zimbabwe’s capitalist class, receiving vast amount of support from the imperialist governments of the United States and Britain. In the name of “democracy,” the MDC has collaborated with and been subservient to imperialism time after time.
As the Herald reported, “[T]he Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act was co-drafted by one of the opposition MDC’s white parliamentarians in Zimbabwe, which was then introduced as a Bill in the US Congress on 8 March 2001 by the Republican senator, William Frist. The Bill was co-sponsored by the Republican rightwing senator, Jesse Helms, and the Democratic senators Hilary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Russell Feingold.”
The arch-racist Helms was particularly fond of imposing sanctions. He co-authored the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which tightened the blockade on Cuba.
In calling for sanctions, the MDC does not represent the sentiment of working and poor people in Zimbabwe. The group’s stature inside Zimbabwe has fallen precipitously since the sanctions were implemented and the economic crisis increased.
Unlike in South Africa during the 1980s, when the anti-apartheid forces fought hard to force the U.S to implement sanctions on the white, racist regime, the sanctions targeting Zimbabwe have not been called for by the majority of the country’s people.
Zimbabwe has been slapped with sanctions because it is seeking to redress the legacy of apartheid and colonial rule by redistributing land.
Mugabe’s government is taking action to overcome the sanctions. Its new “Look East” policy will increase economic ties with China. This policy has drawn more ire from imperialist powers.
For revolutionaries, our position on Zimbabwe should be clear. Zimbabwe is an independent African country seeking to throw off the shackles of imperialist domination and overcome its colonial past.
While Mugabe’s government is bourgeois nationalist with its own contradictions and shortcomings, it is fundamentally anti-imperialist in character and must be supported in its struggles against imperialism. The people of Zimbabwe have a right to decide their own economic and political path free of U.S. or British machinations.
Demanding “hands off Zimbabwe” and an immediate end to sanctions against it are essential to build solidarity among workers and the oppressed all over the world. Zimbabwe deserves massive reparations, not racist demonization of its legitimate leaders and imperialist intervention.
Click here for background on Zimbabwe from Socialism and Liberation magazine.
