THE MOST SANCTIONED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

zimbabwe is the most sanctioned country in the world

Zimbabwe qualifies as the most sanctioned country on earth when one considers that:

• After 90 years of colonial oppression and colonial underdevelopment, the consequences were passed onto the new Zimbabwean government at independence. These consequences included:

• 90 years of mainly colonial debts taken during UN sanctions of about $2.8 billion ($700 million in 1980).

• 14 years of Rhodesian UN sanctions deindustrialization, decapitalization and underdevelopment passed on to the newly independent country alongside

• 17 years of liberation war destruction.

• And for 10 years the government had to buy back land taken during colonization by colonial settlers.

• While Zimbabwe was fighting to rebuild from the above, for 12 years, the apartheid South Africa imposed sanctions and destabilized Zimbabwe through military and economic sabotage.

• For 4 years the apartheid government and the CIA sponsored terrorists known as Super ZAPU to cause mayhem in Matebeland.

• The same countries also sponsored RENAMO bandits in Mozambique to sabotage Zimbabwe’s fuel pipeline and routes to port in that country. This resulted 4 years of war in Matebeleland and 7 years in Mozambique where Zimbabwe was forced to deploy 12000 soldiers at a cost of over $4.8 billion in today’s value.

• The two wars bankrupted the country and to access more loans to continue the national reconstruction project, the country had to go through 10 years of Economic Structural Adjustment in the 90s.

• By 1999, Zimbabwe was over indebted and its war veterans, impoverished by ESAP, were threatening to cause more instability unless they got land and were compensated for the war they fought 17 years earlier.

• To avert another Matebeleland level fallout a decade earlier, the government acquiesced and gave the war veterans gratuities, pensions and land.

• Subsequently, the DRC was facing an invasion by Rwanda and Uganda, which led Laurent Kabila to approach SADC for assistence.

• Zimbabwe being the chair of the SADC ORGAN sent its troops alongside troops from Angola and Namibia to halt the overthrow of the Congolese President and the balkanization of that country.

• For that and giving land back to Zimbabweans the US, EU, Canada, Australia imposed illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe for the past 20 years.

• Today, the sanctions are now being used to coerce the government to take more debt to compensate white settler farmers with 3.5 billion, for losing land during the land reform..

For 133 years, Zim has been under some form of western sanctions, oppression or hegemony, hence it’s a miracle that this country has survived this far because the enemies of the country want it to fail.

Rutendo Bereza Matinyarare, Marketing Strategist for Frontline Strat and Founder member of ZASM and ZUAUWS anti-sanctions movements.s.