Zimbabwe: time to lift sanctions?

You may have seen the piece by Peter Oborne in the Torygraph singing the praises of William Hague as one of the great Foreign Secretaries who has restored the old values to foreign policy and diplomacy.

A recent initiative has been to call for the removal of sanctions against Zimbabwe. Is he right?

Economic sanctions are a very uncertain means of bringing pressure to bear  on distasteful regimes, partly because they are an opportunity for sanctions-breaking by the unscrupulous, partly because they do in fact create an economic stimulus by export-substitution, and partly because they bear hardest on ordinary people whilst the leaders continue to live high on the hog. They are also largely ineffective.

I worked in Zimbabwe when sanctions were still in force.

Previously its economy had been largely agriculture and commodities – copper, asbestos, gold, coal, chrome etc. Sanctions created a vigorous manufacturing industry. Sanctions- busting was big business. The assembly plant for British cars had been closed down by sanctions; new vehicles were readily available but they were all foreign brands, many assembled in South Africa. The only thing in limited supply was Scotch whisky; one brand only (Hundred Pipers).

One rather amusing aspect was that when RAF fighters patrolled the Zambian border, they came under Rhodesian air traffic control!

Economic sanctions have little chance of working when there are open borders, and, of course, Rhodesia leaked like a sieve through South Africa and Mozambique.

The Smith regime collapsed when Botha, the SA PM, cut off the supply of ammunition – a big mistake on his part because it brought the war to his border because he forgot the military rule of ‘always fight forward’.

They were not tried to any degree against South Africa. They could not possibly have worked. There are so many huge Western investments there we would have been shooting ourselves in both feet.

The US gave the South Africans a once-in-a-lifetime gift with their programme of disinvestment. This enabled the jaapies to buy up US companies at fire-sale prices. One enterprising Greek café owner in the Cape registered ‘MacDonalds’ as his own brand!

Sporting and cultural sanctions hurt more, but there were plenty of breaches. The apartheid regime collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions; the country had become almost ungovernable. But I was there during the dying days and it was certainly much safer than now.

In short, they don’t work.

Hague sees that sanctions against Zimbabwe were gesture-politics. If anything they have strengthened the regime because it has enabled it to claim victim-status and to successfully sell the idea to its own people that all its problems are caused by ‘white colonialists’.

After its self-inflicted economic meltdown, the Zimbabwean economy is thriving, thanks largely to adopting the US$ as its currency and eager exploitation of its mineral resources by the Chinese.

Travel bans on Mugabe and his henchmen have scarcely discommoded them. Bob gets his medical treatment in Singapore and Hong Kong, where he has undoubtedly stashed his retirement fund and where Mrs M does her luxury shopping, putting Imelda Marcos in the shade.

So what’s the point? As ever the only people to suffer are the already long-suffering ordinary people.

If Morgan Tsvangarai  wants sanctions lifted what good reason is there to continue them?

There is an election in sight. Hague might insert the message that sanctions will be lifted at Morgan’s request; that might be good for some votes!