by LUKE ZUNGA
BULAWAYO, (CAJ News) – THE United States (US) is debating a new law to repeal or replace Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act 2001 (ZIDERA), a sanctions bill passed in 2001 to punish certain Zimbabwe politicians in the wake of land takeovers.
In 2000, Zimbabwe embarked on a massive land reform programme aimed at reclaiming its land forcibly taken away during the colonial era by white minority, and gave it back to her indigenous black people, something that angered the West, mainly the United Kingdom (UK), the US and European Union (EU) allies.
In the current review the US places a condition that Zimbabwe should pay dispossessed farmers within 12 months.
In terms of the Global Compensation Deed signed in 2020, Zimbabwe promised to pay $3.5 billion to white farmer owners who lost their farms in the land dispossessions which started in 2000.
Zimbabwe has not, and will not, benefit financially from this promise to pay white farmers.
This article starts with the assertion that the economic problems of Zimbabwe, as with many other countries, is lack of CAPITAL, not a shortage of more loans.
Capital does not come from lenders, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and International Development Association (IDA).
The question the country should be seized with is how to raise capital to seed the citizens of Zimbabwe to engage the economy more inclusively.
Zimbabwe never reached this discussion because of two or three technocrats, holding positions in Cabinet secretaryship and in Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion, where ideas of investments should be hatched and developed.
These officials hold the country to ransom. Despite writing them for almost 20 years they did not respond. Their personal assistants confirmed printing and giving them twice.
The President knows nothing about the submissions on how to organize capital. The cabinet can never debate these ideas unless they are on cabinet agenda, and they are not.
The President and cabinet rely solely on this narrow channel of secretaries, but these are people who believe in the unattainable dream of foreign investors from America, UK and Europe flooding Zimbabwe.
Having failed to reach the President of Zimbabwe and his cabinet, the proposals are posted on www.organizecapitals.com to bring this matter to the attention of the executive and the citizens of Zimbabwe in general.
Zimbabwe will be developed by Zimbabweans. And so, they must be capitalized in an organized way.
As they do so foreign investors will also be attracted as well, as China did. Download and print documents on the Zimbabwe flag on the website, to see the industrial plan, which has 50 suggested sites which will completely wipe out unemployment in 10 years, without the need for USA or foreign investors.
This way Zimbabwe will pay off external debts and the farmers in 5 years. Unfortunately, the technocrat ignores, plunging the country into a migrant sending territory and reducing Zimbabwe to a begging bowl.
Seeding the industrial proposal requires only $10 million to start the first site, populated with factories and supporting businesses, not renting the space.
There is enough money because in November 2024 ZIMetro reported that Zimbabwe budgeted $331 million to pay white commercial farmers as part of the debt restructuring with multilateral lenders, which include the World Bank or IMF.
Zimbabwe has a national debt of around $21 billion for a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of around $17 billion. Zimbabwe is heavily indebted.
By paying white commercial farmers in terms of ZIDERA, Zimbabwe appears to be striving for favourable conditions to borrow more or tuck its tail for debt relief from these multilateral institutions instead of seeding industries first and using the profits and taxes therefrom to pay off debt.
Section 4(1) of ZIDERA rendered Zimbabwe ineligible for loans and debt relief by any financial institution in which the USA is involved.
By the time the law was passed in 2001, the IMF had suspended Standby Support Arrangement. In October 1999 IDA suspended all structural adjustment support and guarantees to Zimbabwe.
In May 2000 new loans were cancelled. In September 2000 all committed disbursements were suspended. This is because Zimbabwe had defaulted on existing loans, and did not follow the business plan while, at the same time, sending troops to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and paying war veterans large rewards, both at great unbudgeted cost.
Then President Robert Mugabe (RIP) gave himself too many powers in the draft constitution to avoid censor, causing revolt of the new constitutional effort.
Citizens who protested were subjected to violence and abductions by groups of Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operatives supported by the police and army.
The seizure of land in 2000 was the nail in the coffin, which crushed US-Zimbabwe relationship and tumbled the Zimbabwe dollar exchange. ZIDERA was not the cause of Zimbabwe’s problems but simply precipitated a failed state.
Section 5 of ZIDERA demanded Rule of law, freedom of speech, an end to pre-election intimidation and violence by certain actors within the ruling ZANU-PF, to curtail the likelihood of continuation by successive presidents.
ZIDERA demanded free and fair elections. ZIDERA demanded equitable, transparent, lawful, land reform in line with resolutions of the International Donors Conference on Land Reform and Resettlement held in Harare in September 1998 and an end to the war in the DRC in terms of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement on DRC signed on 10 July 1999.
ZIDERA itself was too naïve to believe that sanctions, of whatever nature, were the way to “support the people of Zimbabwe in their struggle to effect peaceful democratic change, achieve broad-based and equitable economic growth and rule of law’.
If the country is under sanctions, even for the shortest element of time, there cannot be growth as the winner.
Restriction of growth takes time to have a negative impact. Perhaps the US believed that citizens suffering under sanctions will cause an uprising to change the regime.
Whichever way, sanctions are a blunt brush, which assumes a nation had homogenous mindsets and would tolerate the sanctions.
In reality sanctions make a friend suffer the same fate as the target. Further, at no point was the US part of the fight for liberation from colonization and cannot claim that role.
What ZIDERA did was to make the henchmen stronger and silence dissent as unpatriotic unless they toe the line. Freedom of Zimbabweans had nothing to do with the US.
The loans were a matter of debtor and creditor relationships and not the government enacting a law. Clearly the US was infuriated by the plight of white farmers as it has in South Africa recently by inviting Afrikaners as refugees to the US.
Zimbabwe cannot claim it is sanctions that had a negative effect because countries around Zimbabwe who have no sanctions imposed on them did not fare well either – South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia etc.
So, it is not sanctions which kept the Zimbabwe economy down but the ilk of their technocrats, the highly learned officials.
The IMF and World Bank are American institutions. Why would Zimbabwe feel entitled to be funded by these institutions? Moreover, the funding is loans.
Zimbabwe would not qualify for further loans anyway.
Finally, it is not the politicians who fail their countries but the technocrats, the learned folks. Unless everybody gets this clear, Africa will not solve the problems, as people concentrate on removing the President, and as they do so the problem still remains.
– CAJ News