No need to panic, we have been at war for two decades but we are still standing- Mnangagwa

Alrosa has identified several diamond deposits it intends to work on.

Belarus has been supporting our agricultural mechanisation programme, alongside America’s John Deere.

All these developments have been made possible by our far-reaching internal reforms, and by our policy of engagement and re-engagement.

Zimbabwe’s economy is thus fully integrated into world markets, making it markedly susceptible to exogenous shocks, such as this major situation of conflict in Eastern Europe.

Yet there is a way Zimbabwe is in a far better position, comparatively speaking.

For more than two decades, we have been in some kind of war we call illegal western economic sanctions.

These sanctions have been wide-ranging, clearly designed to stymie the whole gamut of our economic activity.

Both American ZDERA sanctions, and those by the European Union which are beginning to be eased somewhat, were designed to hurt us, indeed to attack all sinews of our economy.

We have been under siege already, weathering multiple exogenous shocks.

Our agriculture, our mining, our trade relations, our access to global finance, our infrastructures, our health and social services, our national security, and certainly our bilateral, international and multilateral relations — all these have been curtailed by sanctions.

Well before the West’s ouster of Russia from international payment system SWIFT, Zimbabwe was already grappling with international payment challenges because of illegal sanctions.

Powerful economies of the West have been determined to strangulate us.

We have been in a war: at war for more than two decades without a truce, without a ceasefire.

Two decades of a war without humanitarian corridors.

A total war where a whole people are a legitimate target. This unreported war has levied billions on us, stymied our growth and limited our prospects.

In 2000, when this aggression started, we were just two decades from a brutal Liberation Struggle which claimed more than 70 000 of our people, and which set us back several decades by way of postponed development.

Yet we still stand.

The situation of turbulence is thus not new to us.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

There is a positive side to this unjust war against us.

Aggression has imparted resilience in us and on our nation.

Continued next page

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