To salvage the Zimbabwean economy which is on the brink of collapse, the African Union and Southern Africa Development Community has strongly pressed for the lifting of the 20-year-old sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the western countries. The representatives from southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, met at the 39th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Dar es Salaam recently. The meeting chaired by Tanzania’s President John Magufuli, called for the removal of all sanctions on Zimbabwe to pave way for socio-economic transformation. Dr. Stergomena Lawrence Tax, the SADC executive secretary argued that the sanctions have wrecked the ordinary citizen’s life rather than the key political figures who were targeted for violating human rights. The restrictions on multilateral financing and business dealings with US companies hurt the strategic economic sectors of Zimbabwe curbing innovation, investment and growth, he said. The effects on Zimbabwe spread beyond its borders to the SADC region. The concerns expressed by the SADC were endorsed by AU. Moussa Faki, the chairperson of the AU Commission said all the efforts of President Emerson Mnangangwa to revive the economy will fail if the country continues to be blocked from accessing global markets.
The removal of sanctions the group added, will benefit Zimbabweans as well as the SADC Region, and enhance co-operation of SADC with the European Union and the United States of America. The African Union and SADC in a series of dispatches, argued that the lifting of sanctions will contain the mass emigration of Zimbabweans to other countries and encourage the international lenders to sanction loans for Zimbabwe to stabilise the economy.
On its part, Western countries blamed Harare for inviting the sanctions due to its failure to curb corruption and grant civil liberties. The EU, one of the sanctioning bodies, said the removal of sanctions can be considered only after December. It also pointed out that the country continues to have the tariff and quota-free, access to the EU market granted by the Economic and Partnership Agreement ratified in 2012.
Zimbabwe has been under sanctions since 2001. The sanctions were imposed to force key government and political leaders to improve its human rights record, bring democratic practices and initiate actions to return the farms seized or expropriated by former President Mugabe’s regime. Political analysts point out that Zimbabwe could, in fact, attract US rivals like China and Russia.
World Bank estimates a third of Zimbabwe’s population (5.7 million people) as extremely poor. According to the World Bank, the Inflation rates reached 230 percent in July this year and food prices increased by 319 percent.
