I would say that that extension was inherently unjust because it did not matter the political affiliation or behaviour of the member of the immediate family. We know that in families, we have people who belong to different political parties, for example my brother is a staunch ZANU PF supporter.
I am certainly not but we are from the same family. So if he was covered by sanctions, the same sanctions would affect me even if I was by definition innocent. Now, the targeted sanctions were extended to cover companies. The most important thing is that these companies were employers and therefore, some of them have folded, others downsized and the net effect was that the worker was affected.
I want to move away from the targeted sanctions, to the sanctions directed at Government. ZIDERA directs the sanctions not at particular individuals but at Government. Now, because of these sanctions targeted at Government, Zimbabwe does not have equal access to international credit. So, it cannot get credit from the IMF, IDA and other financial institutions. That is problem number one. Problem number two, because of the sanctions, Zimbabwe cannot have equal access to international markets. Let us accept it that the Government is the largest employer. So, if you sanction the employer, you ipso facto, sanction the employee.
As a result, we have sorry conditions of service for our civil servants. So these sanctions had an unintended consequence. These sanctions had too much collateral damage, accepting that the Government is the largest provider of services in health, education, road infrastructure, et cetera. Accepting that the Government is the largest provider of that service, sanctioning the Government means affecting the ability to provide those services. So, we saw health going into comatose, the education system, and so on.
In our respectful view, the people targeted by the sanctions are not the sufferers of the sanctions. The fact of the matter is that these sanctions have made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Therefore, they are not saving their purpose. Massive unemployment has resulted in Zimbabwe – actually 49% of the Zimbabweans live below the poverty datum line. That is unacceptable. The Zimbabwean economy is now smaller than it was in 2002. As a result of sanctions, criminals take advantage. Every situation breeds its own antithesis. So, where there is sanction, the antithesis is sanction busting. The late Ian Smith did that in a very smart way. He was fighting a war that was costing him about one million pounds a day and he was trading with the Soviet Union.
He knew that the Soviet Union was supporting ZAPU; he knew that the Soviet Union were supporting the liberation movements but he sold his chrome to the Soviet Union as a way of busting the sanctions. Now this current Government, we have a lot of top Government people who, under the guise of busting sanctions, are now smuggling gold through regular ports of entry. Those transactions cannot be traced because they are covered by secrecy anyway. So, sanctions breed corruption; make the rich richer and the poor poorer. So they must go. As a result of unemployment, there is a lot of drug abuse by our young people in the locations. They are drinking or smoking mutoriro and other substances. As a result, we have a preponderance of mental illnesses that we did not know.
As MDC, we think these sanctions have outlived their usefulness and they must go. Also because of the sanctions, there is a ready excuse for under performance. Sometimes, people fail to deliver and just blame sanctions. Sometimes, people fail to be fair in the rural areas – you give food to this one and you do not give food to that one and when people ask you why we are being deprived, the ready excuse is sanctions. So that excuse must go.
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