A good colonialist is a dead one

Last Thursday and Friday Zimbabweans were rudely reminded of the nationalist proposition that a good colonialist is a dead one when Whitehall descendants of Zimbabwe's dead colonisers displayed their nauseating hypocrisy as they tripped themselves and revealed their true dirty colours over a currently burning question in Brussels whether to suspend or to lift EU sanctions against Zimbabwe on July 23 as widely demanded and expected by the majority of international opinion or whether to maintain the ugly sanctions.

On Thursday and clearly at the prompting of confused and confusing Whitehall officialdom who were apparently keen to fly a kite in order to preview possible reactions in order to plan for their management, the British Daily Telegraph reported without naming its sources that EU mandarins were finalising plans for the suspension of sanctions against Zimbabwe pending the holding of the as yet to be decided referendum on a new constitution and the holding of the harmonised general election that is now due. The Daily Telegraph's report falsely claimed that Zanu-PF had joined the MDC formations to welcome the planned suspension when its own story not only indicated that this was not the case but also shamelessly left out some critical submissions from the Zanu-PF sources it quoted including this writer against the proposed EU suspension of its sanctions against Zimbabwe.

And then last Friday the 13th of all days, the same Whitehall mandarins who were eager to direct and influence the description and projection of the sanctions kite they started flying through the Daily Telegraph the previous day, decided to use the British Independent to make unwarranted, scurrilous, insulting and very provocative comments against President Mugabe and Zimbabwe which are totally shameful, unacceptable and therefore objectionable in the extreme.

Relying on unnamed Whitehall sources in the British Foreign Office the Independent on Friday confirmed that EU talks are planned over whether to approve the move (to suspend or lift sanctions) while indicating that there's was a widespread view that the move cannot be agreed without Britain's approval because of the

UK's bilateral agenda against Zimbabwe.
The unnamed Foreign Office official behind the Independent's story was further quoted as saying that it would be "awful" to lift or suspend EU sanctions against Zimbabwe and foolishly adding that "I don't think that he (Mugabe) or his people would be visiting London soon . . . the idea of him shaking hands with the Queen is appaling. The hostility of the UK to any easing of the international pressure on Mugabe suggests that (the move) is unlikely and the Foreign Office believes it would be hard to lend an olive branch to Zimbabwe until Mugabe either steps down or dies".


Nothing could be more unacceptable than this British colonial arrogance which explains why a good colonialist is indeed a dead one.

Now that the British government has clearly used its embedded journalists in the Daily Telegraph and the so-called Independent in London to frame the narrative of the impending EU decision on its obnoxious sanctions against Zimbabwe due to be officially announced on July 23, it is propitious to tell Whitehall to go to hell with its neo-colonial narrative. Zimbabwe will never be a colony again. Nobody here has time to play silly British games. Flying neo-colonial kites has no takers in Zimbabwe.

But perhaps the only useful thing that has come out from British media reports is that finally the British lie that EU sanctions against Zimbabwe are multilateral in character and content has been fatally exposed by last Friday's Independent in London which showed beyond any doubt that the British government believes that because it instigated these sanctions in the first place, it has a veto power on whether to lift them or suspend them because it has a bilateral matter with Zimbabwe best captured by the Whitehall nonsense that the idea of President Mugabe "shaking hands with the Queen is appaling".

Previous denials are now hot air. At long last we know that the ugly sanctions that have devastated the living conditions of ordinary people were imposed not in the interests of human rights or democracy but simply to ensure that President Mugabe does not shake hands with the Queen of England.  What a tragedy!

If Whitehall mandarins really believe that the worldwide call for the total and unconditional removal of EU sanctions against Zimbabwe is in order to enable President Mugabe to shake hands with the Queen of England or to enable "his people" to visit London then they are stupid after all. They need to get real. The Queen is theirs and not ours. There's nothing in London of interest to us that either has no alternative or that we cannot enjoy at the same time with Londoners.

Over the last 12 years since the imposition of EU sanctions Zimbabweans have learnt that there are far better and cheaper shopping places than London and business partners who are not British.  What the Britons watch on television we also watch with them at the same time. Just the other week many Zimbabweans watched Andy Murray's tears at Wimbledon together with the equally tearful Britons who included their Prime Minister David Cameron as Murray failed to end

Britain's humiliating 75-year failure to have a male winning a Wimbledon tennis championship in their own backyard.

If the British are as good as they purport to be, then why in the Lord's name can't they find a male to win their own Wimbledon tennis championship?

But on the issue in question, and thanks to the media narrative planted by British Foreign office mandarins in the Independent in London last Friday, it is good that finally it is official that the British government has a veto power on whether to lift or suspend EU sanctions and Zimbabweans can only hope that their sometimes naïve GPA negotiators have taken note along with President Zuma's treacherous facilitation team.

Meanwhile, there are three things that need to be said in the strongest terms about the unacceptability of the proposed EU suspension of its sanctions against Zimbabwe.

In the first place, the EU in general and the UK in particular must understand that their sanctions regime against Zimbabwe should be lifted totally and unconditionally because they are evil and should not have been imposed in the first place.  What makes the EU sanctions evil is that while they purport to target elected Zanu PF individuals or officials or entities, their essence and impact has been to devastate Zimbabwe's economy and to hit the hardest ordinary people across the political divide and across the full social spectrum of our society.

This fact is now common cause and does not need to be belaboured not least because it has been confirmed, even if at the level of broadbased perception, by no lesser a figure than the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.

It is evil to negatively impact on the livelihoods of ordinary people in their generality under the guise of targeting some individuals.  The difference between individuals and society is not only self-evident but also huge.  In the same vein evil is evil and the proposition that it can or should be suspended is absurd, preposterous and evil.

There's not a single legitimate religion in the world that prays for the suspension of evil. All religions, with the exception of Satanism which is not a religion in the strict sense of the term, understand that evil must be destroyed totally and unconditionally. As evil, the EU sanctions must altogether go pronto with no conditions not least because they should not have been imposed in the first place.

Secondly, besides being an evil that should be rejected in total, EU sanctions against Zimbabwe are also illegal in terms of EU rules and regulations let alone international law and must be unconditionally lifted for this reason.

As has been widely reported the EU has justified its ugly sanctions under the false grounds that they target individuals and entities "whose activities seriously undermine democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe". The record will show that when the EU extended these sanctions on February 17, 2012, the EU's foreign affairs and security policy chief Catherine Ashton, falsely asserted that "the [EU] council was only retaining in the Contested Measures in 2012 the particular individuals and entities who the council still considered to be involved in or associated with policies and activities that undermine human rights, democracy and the rule of law".

But this self-serving assertion has been shown to be legally wrong not least because while EU sanctions purport to be targeting members of President Mugabe's Government (which must include or mean the current GPA government that has the two MDC formations), they in fact only target the previous Zanu-PF thus exposing their duplicity.  As a matter of fact, the EU sanctions include many Zimbabweans who clearly cannot be said to be either the 'leaders' of Zimbabwe or individuals or entities 'associated' with Zanu PF in any legal sense but who have been included on purely and only grounds that have never been lawfully tested or corroborated in terms of the rule of law.

A number of Zimbabweans on the EU sanctions found themselves on the list at the sinister recommendation of the British government merely on the basis of unfounded claims that "they are said to be Zanu-PF members of government or members of a Zanu PF faction" yet as has been made clear by Attorney General Johannes Tomana in his historic litigation against the EU on the matter in Brussels, "being a Zanu-PF member of the Government or a Zanu-PF faction is legally insufficient and is inadequate as a ground for including an individual or entity" in the evil sanctions since it is neither an allegation of wrongdoing nor an allegation of current participation in any activities alleged by the EU to seriously undermine democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of in Zimbabwe.

Attorney General Tomana's historic legal case against EU sanctions in Brussels makes a compelling case that clearly shows beyond any rational and legal doubt that the EU has seriously breached its own rules and in the process seriously violated its own concept of the rule especially with reference to these four important considerations:

    None of the Zimbabweans under the EU sanctions was given any evidence in advance to support any of the grounds on which they were included in the evil list;
    None of those under sanctions were offered an opportunity to defend themselves against the alleged evidence used against them to justify their inclusion in the evil list;
    The EU sanctions regime does not ensure that evidence will be disclosed and that an opportunity will ever be given for those in the evil sanctions list to be able to comment on the purported evidence against them;
    The EU sanctions make very serious allegations of criminal conduct against those included in the evil list but does not provide any indication of the source of those allegations and do not pay any attention to the data protection that would necessarily arise should the EU Council or EU Commission be required to process data on criminal offences or convictions of the individuals and entities that have been unlawfully included in the evil sanctions list.

In the circumstances, why should the patently illegal EU sanctions be allowed to escape legal scrutiny under the cover of pretending to suspend an illegality when the right thing to do should be to void that illegality by totally and unconditionally lifting the sanctions?

If the EU proceeds with its planned suspension of its evil and illegal sanctions, then the matter will have to be taken to its logical conclusion through Attorney General

Tomana's pending litigation in Brussels that has now reached an advanced and critical stage because suspending the sanctions would be as good as keeping them when they should go. By proposing to suspend the sanctions, the EU is behaving as badly as a child who is a bully and wants to eat and keep his cake.

The third and last point is that it would be pointless and therefore meaningless for the EU to suspend or even to lift its evil and illegal sanctions while similar US sanctions remain under the so-called Zimbabwe Democracy Act (Zidera).

It is common cause not only that the US and EU sanctions against Zimbabwe were imposed in a mutually coordinated manner in pursuit of mutual regime change objectives but also that the US sanctions are more diabolic than their EU equivalent in that they have specifically and negatively affected Zimbabwe's economic relations with multilaterals such as the IMF, World Bank and the AfDB and have also negatively impacted on Zimbabwe's sovereign risk in connection with the facility of international credit lines with devastating consequences on the lives of ordinary people.

As such, suspending or lifting EU evil and illegal sanctions while keeping the diabolic US sanctions under Zidera would be a non-event that would not change a damn thing besides exposing the coordinated hypocrisy of the EU and the US.  It is no good for the EU's left hand to let go of sanctions while the right hand of the US keeps squeezing. Both hands must let go at the same time.

In the same connection, linking the planned suspension of EU sanctions to the holding of the expected referendum on an improbable Copac draft constitution and the forthcoming elections that are now due is totally unacceptable as both processes are inherently the prerogative of Zimbabweans to conduct and determine on their own without any interference from any outside force, let alone former colonial powers in Europe. The time has come for the EU to disabuse itself of the notion that it has any right to use evil and illegal sanctions to supervise the internal affairs of its former colonies under the false cover of human rights and democracy, failure of which they will face unprecedented resistance.

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Professor Jonathan Moyo is the MP for Tsholotsho