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(TALKZIMBABWE) Sanctions: Hurting the vulnerable to punish governments

Sanctions: Hurting the vulnerable to punish governments
Editor's commentary
Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:58:00 +0000

THE European Union will meet Tuesday to impose further sanctions against Zimbabwe. They call them ‘targeted sanctions’. They are right. The sanctions are targeted on Zimbabwe’s business nerve centre though. They are targeted on the Zimbabwean economy and eventually on the very people supposed to be ‘helped’ by the sanctions. Imposing penalties on businesses operating in the country can hardly be termed 'targeted sanctions on individuals'. Who buys that argument? An inflation rate of 2.2 million percent is hardly a result of ‘targeted sanctions’, nor is it a result of economic mismanagement per se.

Someone is fiddling with the economy ─ someone is making the economy 'scream' from somewhere.

Pressuring a German company to stop supplying paper for printing money, can never be called a ‘targeted sanctions on an individual’.

If Tesco withdraws from Zimbabwe, that is not a 'targeted sanction' – that is inhuman strangulation. It hurts the poor and vulnerable – nothing more, nothing less.

The effects of such heartlessness are felt on the streets in Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, Gweru; in fact everywhere in Zimbabwe. Prices are doubling every 25 days and individuals are finding life unbearable. The ‘misery index’ is rising dramatically.

Who’s losing, who’s benefiting?

The Kennedy family amassed a lot of wealth during the Prohibition – trading illicit booze. The sumptuary laws that prohibited alcohol and extravagance hardly worked. The rumor is that mob boss Frank Costello admitted that he and Joseph P. Kennedy were bootlegging partners – often supplying their Harvard buddies with ilicit booze.

So what happens in Zimbabwe if sanctions bite?

Those with money, the cash barons, strike it rich, for a time at least, despite the economic turmoil and sanctions. They will import scarce goods, sell them at exorbitant rates ─ the sanctions have made some goods very expensive. Well most of them.

Bus loads of Zimbabweans make excursions to South Africa and Zambia, to buy and sell in Zimbabwe at exhorbitant prices, but not everyone can do this.

The inflation rate has broken through 2 million percent annually. The Zimbabwean dollar, whose exchange rate has slipped from about 400billion to 800billion to the U.S. dollar in four weeks, is no longer ‘accepted’ for purchases of some durable goods.

Huge factory complexes have gone quiet, and most production lines stalled.

‘Whiz kids’ are spotting sound investments in basic commodities. ‘The basic necessity commodity market’ is one place where you can have a rate of return that is of a high magnitude.

Petrol imports, forbidden by the sanctions, generate profits of 1 000 percent or more in hard currency, and enterprises desperate for spare parts and raw materials are willing to pay a hefty markup just to remain afloat.

Ordinary citizens pay hefty amounts for basics. So sanctions ‘kill the poor’ and help those targeted by them to accumulate more wealth, so why use them as a tool?

They make policies murky, and murky policies hurt the vulnerable.

Their usefulness – as a policy tool – has been debated for years, with many arguments concluding that they are ineffective.

Sanctions might have a positive, enduring impact on bargaining dynamics or they could help isolate or weaken the power of government, but is that enough justification for them? Should thousands die to alter bargaining dynamics?

in any case, where conflicts are actually resolved, there has been a combination of sanctions and military force: e.g. Saddam’s Iraq or Milosevic’s Yugoslavia ― both illegally bombed and regimes changed by force after years of sustained sanctions.

itayi@talkzimbabwe.com

Labels: SANCTIONS, ZIMBABWE

posted by MrK @ 2:37 AM