The recent World Economic Forum, WEF, held in Davos, Switzerland, was held against an overbearing backdrop of:
- Global climate change Crisis;
- Global Covid-19 pandemic;
- Conflict in Eastern Europe of clear global proportions;
- Global supply chain disruptions.
These adverse developments have made the global and the local more intertwined as never before.
No country, no region, no hemisphere, is spared from this enmeshing spectre. This means limited autonomy for the local, more say for the global. Above all, it means crafting local responses within limiting global givens. Under such global conditions, economists’ notion of ceteris paribus — all things being equal — looks anachronistic. Nothing is equal anymore.
Davos confirmed many things that clearly worry. It confirmed a shrinking global order set against ever-enlarging global challenges. The response to the four aforementioned global challenges suggests a world retreating from global multilateralism in which challenges are faced and tackled collectively through cooperation and collaborative global action. Even as we caucused in Davos, it was clear to us from Africa that some in our midst had come to sell their war and to foist their viewpoint on the rest of us, rather than to engage in the spirit of greater peace and multilateral approach to challenges facing our planet.
There is a disturbing streak of selfishness and coercive diplomacy which is exemplified by Washington’s latest overreaching legislative gamble called Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act.
Through this Act, United States of America coercively seeks to legislate for a whole continent, in line with its own whims and interests. The illegal Act flattens a whole continent to reduce it to a mere appendage of America!
In the eyes of USA, our nations are not independent and have no right to relate to other nations of the world as they see fit or in pursuit of their national interests.
The last time America tried this was in 1901 when it passed the Platt Amendment on Cuba by which the Government of Cuba then was enjoined “never to enter into any treaty or other compact with any foreign power or powers”; and was also required to “consent that the United States may exercise the right to intervene” in Cuba for “the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty…”
To imagine that the United States Government, through its legislature, plans another Platt Amendment for a whole Continent of Africa simply beggars belief.
Whether in the Pacific Region, the Americas or in Asia, we are seeing a race towards militarisation through adversarial and confrontational blocs which undermine global peace guaranteed by observance of international tenets enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
In all this, there is a clear attempt to threaten and objectify Africa, the only continent with abundant resources, and still sworn to multilateralism under the recent Africa Continental Free Trade Area, AfCFTA. Given America’s iniquitous ZDERA, Zimbabwe is best qualified to warn the world against this insidious encroachment on national and continental sovereignties by powerful States seeking to overreach under flimsy guises.
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