Will the EU remove sanctions on Zimbabwe come February 18

When the European Union meets on February 18 to review the illegal sanctions it imposed on Zimbabwe, will it decide to extend the sanctions by another year, or will it remove them all together?

The European Union, it can be argued, will decide to extend the illegal sanctions it imposed on Zimbabwe by another year. This is given credence by the fact that Zimbabwe could decide to hold national elections this year.

National elections have always given the EU the best chance to achieve its ulterior goals in the Republic of Zimbabwe.

Anyone who believes the cheap public relations reasons the European Union proffers as justification for its annual extension of the illegal sanctions it imposed on Zimbabwe is free to do so. That myth helps the EU's spin doctors to keep their lucrative jobs, for the Euro zone debt crisis has squeezed the EU job market tightly.

The overriding purpose of the illegal sanctions from the very day they were imposed is to engender as much economic suffering as has never been experienced before by the ordinary but majority section of the voters who, since Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, have been consistently voting President Mugabe and ZANU PF into power.

It is the undeclared calculation of the EU that the sanctions caused economic suffering will finally break up the spirit of the ordinary majority voters and compel them to vote President Mugabe and ZANU PF out of power.

In other words, the EU sanctions on Zimbabwe are less targeted at the names of individuals and entities that appear on the official EU sanctions list than the ordinary Zimbabweans and indigenous companies.

Pushing ZANU PF and President Robert Mugabe out of power will give Britain and her EU club members unfettered access to Zimbabwe's valuable national resources. The British will be the executive power deciding which EU member is awarded which contract as thanks for the support to oust ZANU PF and its leader from power.

President Robert Mugabe, who says "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again," and ZANU PF have proved since 1980 to be a stubborn obstacle to the British project of recolonising of Zimbabwe.

And yet the British covet Zimbabwe's valuable natural resources daily. One has to listen to the British House of Lords to gauge the extent of the gravity of the British need for the valuable natural resources of Zimbabwe.

It was the same insatiable desire for the same valuable national resources that propelled the British to colonise the land between the mighty Limpopo and Zambezi rivers in 1890 and called it Rhodesia.

Anyone who says Cecil John Rhodes invaded the land today called Zimbabwe in order to promote "human rights, freedom of expression, the rule of law and good governance" must be coming straight from Mars.

Anyone who thinks that the British have forgotten Zimbabwe's  valuable natural resources because Zimbabwe attained political independence in 1980 needs to revise their position with urgency.The British keep meticulous records of these valuable natural resources on their secret files. And they keenly need those valuable natural resources.

The EU, which we know is doing all the dirty work in Zimbabwe on behalf of the British, is effectively saying to black Zimbabweans:"Hey you Africans, why did you take your stolen land back from the British descendants? We are going to punish you for that but we won't say it openly that we are punishing you in solidarity with the British Government. Don't you know that the British are our kith and kin? When you anger them, know that you have angered us too. It does not matter whether you black Africans are correct or wrong!"

The continental imperialist club, using its pliant media propaganda instruments would like the world community of nations to believe that sanctions were imposed on Zimbabwe "to encourage the persons targeted to reject policies that lead to the suppression of human rights, of the freedom of expression and of good governance".

No one else in their right senses living in Zimbabwe right now would claim that they are not feeling the debilitating heat of the illegal EU sanctions every day in one way or the other so much so that it becomes an inexcusable insult to hear the EU, or its spin doctors, say the sanctions are only targeted against a few individuals or entities.

If there is anyone else who is not being adversely affected by the EU sanctions that person is either living outside Zimbabwe at the moment, or they happen to be among the local EU selected few who are being cushioned daily against the deleterious effects of the illegal sanctions through clandestine and generous financial and material donations.

The EU financial and material donations to a selected few local Zimbabweans is meant to divide the electorate and government leadership and incite the favoured few to sell out and rubbish the economic policies of the majority revolutionary section of Zimbabweans.

The favoured few indeed sell out and rubbish such viable revolutionary policies as the land reform exercise without giving any alternatively viable economic policy positions.

There are some analysts, on the other hand, who would want to believe that the European Union will indeed decide to remove the sanctions regime once and for all, well, those analysts are free to hold on to their belief until February the 20th when the validity of the sanctions period extended last year expires.

The majority of ordinary Zimbabweans, who are the most affected by the illegal sanctions, would make a great sigh of relief if the EU were indeed to decide this month to unconditionally remove the current raft of cruel sanctions it imposed on Zimbabwe without the endorsement of the United Nations.

However, it seems that nothing meaningful is going to come out in favour of Zimbabwe when the imperialist European Union meets on February 18 to have an annual review of its illegal sanctions.

The illegal sanctions are most likely to be maintained, albeit in a sanitised form; a name or two of individuals or entities could be dropped from the sanctions list and one or two concessions are likely to be made with some debasing conditions attached.

It is most likely too that the EU, which has shamelessly arrogated itself powers purportedly to promote and supervise democracy, human rights and the rule of law in the world outside the geographical limits of its 27 member states, will even add to the sanctions list one or two names of individuals or entities in solidarity with the United States of America whose equally illegal sanctions recently pounced on two diamond mining companies in Zimbabwe to paralyse the economy.

It is insultingly apparent that the European Union, whose Commission presidency the Portuguese José Manuel Barroso holds, does not even have any justification that stands the test of objective analysis for its continued strangulation of the Zimbabwean economy through maintaining an illegal sanctions regime on the country.

Incidentally, José Manuel Barroso's country when it was hit by the Euro zone sovereign debt crisis ran to ask for help from Angola, its former colony.

Barroso must have the guts to tell the British to stop behaving like kindergarten children in the EU; the British have to swallow their colonial pride, live in the 21st century and hold bilateral talks with the Zimbabwe government if they want to be involved as development partners in Zimbabwe.

Who knows, with the clearance of  Zimbabwe's diamonds for sale internationally, and many other valuable mineral resources the British covet and know are in the country, Britain could be rescued from its financial problems by its own former colony.

The time for the British to have their own way in Zimbabwe as if Zimbabwe were still its own colony is long over.Gone too is the time for the British to revisit the land question; the British shied away from addressing the land question by cleverly internationalising a wholly bilateral matter.

The aggrieved Zimbabweans boldly and fundamentally dealt with the land question in an irreversible manner.So, there is no special treatment for the British whatsoever outside bilateral talks.

It will be foolish for anyone to expect the EU at its February 18 meeting to make resolutions that will seek to improve the general quality of life of most ordinary Zimbabweans.The EU has no respect for Zimbabwe's coalition government; it only respects the British coalition government led by David Cameron.

If the EU had any grain of respect for Zimbabwe's coalition government, it would have rescinded the illegal sanctions two years ago and let the Zimbabweans chart their own destiny within the context of SADC and the African Union values.

There is no respect for the people of Zimbabwe in the EU's scheme of things.The imperialist monster is desperately seeking relevance in Zimbabwe through extending its illegal sanctions.

By trussing with sanctions the legs and hands of one party which is going to participate in Zimbabwe's forthcoming national elections and at the same time demanding "free and fair elections" the EU is hiding the fact that it is tilting the elections field in favour of their preferred candidates.

And we do not call that democracy, but interference into the domestic affairs of a sovereign state. This must be resisted with all the power and wisdom Zimbabweans can muster.

There is every need for Zimbabweans to maintain their unity of purpose, to remain resilient, vigilant, resourceful and dedicated to the defence of their sovereignty and territorial intergrity:the resolutions of the EU's February 18 annual sanctions review meeting should not catch revolutionaries covered in the damp blanket of false hope.The meeting is not going to be held in the interest of Zimbabweans.

"In order to halt foreign interference(sanctions) in the affairs of developing countries(Zimbabwe)it is necessary to study, understand,expose and actively combat neo-colonialism in whatever guise it may appear.For the methods of neo-colonialism are subtle and varied.They operate not only in the economic field, but also in the political,religious,ideological and cultural spheres."

So warns none other than Kwame Nkrumah, the African visionary whose majestic bronze statue today stands erect in Addis Ababa in total and eternal resistance to all forms of imperialism in Africa.He penned down those precious words one day in one of his files whose contents today have been compiled into the book Rhodesia File.

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Dancase B.Gideon is a freelance writer based in Harare.