We wanted the means of production, the land and whatever is underneath the land and what then comes after that. Since this was coming from the Minister of International Development who was representing the Foreign Policy of the UK Government, it was very clear that the British Government would not honour its colonial obligation as agreed at the Lancaster House. We then decided to take our land. Revolutions do not have any order. What we just needed was land, whether it was going to be done orderly or not orderly, we just wanted land so we took back our land. You can define it the way you want but we then took the land.
As a response to what was done by the Zimbabweans, the UK Government, USA Government and the EU ganged up against Zimbabwe and imposed sanctions and as long as these sanctions were done against Article 41 of the United Nations, they are illegal. The unilateral sanctions that were imposed by the UK, USA and the EU on Zimbabwe are illegal and unjustified because Zimbabwe wanted to correct a historical imbalance, historical injustice and these sanctions came in various forms as already alluded to by the mover of the motion.
ZIDERA, where the USA President is the one with the full responsibility to certify if Zimbabwe should remain or should be removed from the sanctions restrictive measures. Then there is also AGOA, Executive Measures, the OFAC and the EU Coercive and restrictive measures but what you may also want to know is that the USA is crying more than the bereaved. It is the USA Government that came up with ZIDERA and not the UK Government. We did not have any issue with the USA Government but the sanctions in the form of an Act which has to be repealed or imposed by the USA Government and this is why I am saying they are crying more than the bereaved.
The Impact of the Unilateral Sanctions.
The cumulative effect of the over 20 years of unilateral coercive measures has been immense, impacting negatively on all sectors of the Zimbabwean economy and its people as a whole, severely undermining the relations of the United Nations development goals, the ZIM-ASSET and the economic recovery programme. These are some of the policies that we have implemented since the inception of these sanctions and the sanctions had almost threatened the achievements of the Sustainable Development Goals. During the imposition of the unilateral coercive sanctions, the enjoyment of human rights as enshrined in a number of international legal instruments and the Constitution of Zimbabwe has been violated.
The Former US assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crooker, during US Sanctions Law hearings said ZIDERA was meant to make the economy of Zimbabwe scream. Crooker said if you want to separate the people from a ZANU-PF Government, you should make the economy scream. This is why you see today the Hon. Minister of Finance has no fiscal space to implement Government programmes. We can cry and say the fiscal measures are too tight but these are the impacts of sanctions. ZIDERA shrunk the fiscal space for the Government. The Government is hamstrung. ZIDERA, to us Zimbabweans, is an antithesis of the problem that we want to realise as Zimbabwe and it has grossly violated the rights of Zimbabweans.
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