The previous week marked the second edition of the SADC Anti-Sanction day meant to call for the removal of sanctions imposed against Zimbabwe by the UK, USA and the European Union.
The day also fell within the ten-day mission of the UN Special Rapporteur who was assessing the impact of sanctions in Zimbabwe.
Delivering the preliminary report, the rapporteur questioned the legality of sanctions in Zimbabwe. She also highlighted the adverse impacts on the lives of Zimbabweans including emigration, salary degradation, unemployment, failure to deliver services, sexual exploitation and extreme poverty.
Dear Professor Alena Douhan, please don’t give them a ticket to engage in corruption. Oh, it’s too late now.
“I amplify the fact that the unilateral sanction introduced allegedly to minimize corruption in practice results in its growth because of the impossibility to do direct bank transfers, need to involve third parties and use non-transparent mechanisms,” she says.
Corruption has been the dearth of the Zimbabwean economy and at this point, sanctions cannot be used as a justification. Yes, there is a degree of possibility, but what of the leadership morality that is supposed to be displayed by chosen leaders.
According to Transparency International, Zimbabwe scored 24 out of 100 with 0 being the most corrupt, scoring below the world average of 32. The country is ranked 157 out of 180 global countries.
This means that we have major drivers of corruption in the country and sanctions might be the least of them. Non-effective public resource management is one of them.
According to the sanctioning states, corruption and abuse of human rights are what attracted the targeted sanctions in the first place.
The rapporteur, however, acknowledges that Zimbabwe needs to enable the effective functioning of the anti-corruption commission and the system of anti-corruption courts, and proceed with complex and verifiable investigations.
The current system is crippled, suffocated by a lack of accountability and transparency. The catch and release system has eroded the people’s confidence in the system’s capability to suppress corruption in the country.
Above everything, everyone included in the sanction matrix knows exactly what actions need to be taken to reach an understanding with the sanctioning states. In the end, ordinary citizens suffer the consequences and are left vulnerable to extreme poverty.
