Whites against Zim sanctions call 'ranting of a lunatic fringe'

Zimbabwe Social Democrats dismiss the call by Smith's Whites Against Sanction for EU engagement with Mugabe as the ranting of a lunatic fringe who do not care about the suffering black majority.

An all-white lobby group calling itself Whites Against Sanctions (WAS), formed early this year, has once again called on the European Union (EU) to lift the remaining targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his wife and praised the EU's re-engagement policies towards Zimbabwe.

ZSD dismiss WAS are a lunatic fringe of misguided individuals whose racist mentality blinded them to the true purpose of the sanctions before independence and after independence.

The white regime of Ian Smith faced UN imposed economic sanctions and many whites then, like Matthew Smith and his WAS loony-brigade today, said sanctions should be lifted because they were hurting the ordinary people more than they were hurting those in power. On the economic front alone there was some truth in anti-sanction group in the Rhodesia days; Matthew Smith and his lot are just fruitcakes in to win favours with the Mugabe regimes.

The Zimbabwe economy was already on the ropes when Mugabe signed on to the first five year IMF and WB sponsored Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in 1990 after a decade of following ill-advised Zanu-PF's "scientific" socialist policies. The programme failed to revive the economy because the regime signed-on to a raft of reforms but only half-heartedly implemented a few and ignored the rest.

In 1995 the regime signed on to the second five-year ESAP; that too failed to turn the economy around for exactly the same reasons.

The regime had signed on to the two programmes purely to get the money with no intention of honouring its obligations in the programme or paying back the money. By the end of 2000 the IMF, WB and many international institution had stopped lending money to the Mugabe government not because anyone had imposed sanctions on the regime but because the regime was a bad debtor.

By the time the West imposed sanctions on the regime in 2002 the Zimbabwe economy was already in the gutter!

What Matthew Smith and his fellow WAS loonies (and share in common with their ant-sanctions loonies of the Rhodesia era) have completely failed to appreciate here is the essence thrust behind the sanctions ' that the ordinary people should have a meaningful say in the governance of the country, the right to vote!

Yes the white ruled Rhodesia was an economic success but what good was that to the black majority when they were denied a meaningful share of that prosperity and relegated to third class status in the country of their own forefathers? UN imposed economic sanctions did cause some economic hardships to the blacks but that was a sacrifice worth making to end what would otherwise be a life-time of exploitation and discrimination generation after generation.

The Zimbabwe economy would not have been on the ropes by 1990, in the gutter by 2000 and by 2004 stuck and sinking in this shit-hole we are in today; if the ordinary Zimbabweans had a meaningful say in who governed the country. Yes the country has had frequent elections but Mugabe and Zanu-PF have been very care to ensure the elections did NOT result in a regime change. The only way to deliver this oxymoronic result was by ensuring elections were not free, fair and credible.

"For too long the international community has isolated Zimbabwe to the detriment of the ordinary Zimbabwean people - and to the detriment of those who live here. The time for mutual antagonism is over and the time to amend relationship is now," said the WAS group's chairperson Matthew Smith.

How ironic that this group of loonies should be concerned about the EU engaging with the Mugabe government and yet they have never once asked the tyrannical Mugabe government to engage with the millions of black Zimbabweans whom it has denied a fair share in the nation's riches and whose rights and human dignity the regime has crashed under foot for 34 years!

For all their claim to the contrary, whites like Matthew Smith do not care about the suffering blacks, they do not see them are humans worthy of the same rights, freedoms and human dignity as pronounced in the UN Declaration. They did not care before independence and they still do not care today. Well some of us care, thank God.

Zimbabwe will never get out of this political and economic mess and end the tragic human suffering all round us until the nation has a government that is accountable to the people. The ultimate expression of a government accountable to the people is that the latter in a free, fair and credible election should be able to change the government of the day.

The targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his cronies helped to put the issue of free and fair elections in Zimbabwe on the national and international agenda and to keep it there; that is why the sanctions must stay!

We, in the Zimbabwe Social Democrats, condemn the EU for lifting some of the sanctions against this tyrannical Zanu-PF regime and for its re-engagement overtures with the regime!

Conclusion
Mugabe and Zanu-PF blatantly rigged the 2013 elections and lifting some of the targeted sanctions against the regime was a big mistake.

Whilst we in the Zimbabwe Social Democrats accept that the MDC's failure to implement the democratic reforms was a significant contributory factor in allowing Mugabe to rig the elections. Still, that does not absolve Mugabe and Zanu-PF from their statutory obligation to the people of Zimbabwe to hold free and fair elections. And it is not right that the rest of the nation should be punished for MDC's breath-taking incompetence.

The sanctions against this tyrannical Mugabe regime must stay as one of the key weapons to ending it peacefully and quickly!

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Wilbert Mukori, Secretary General, Zimbabwe Social Democrats - zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com