Cholera Outbreak Outcome of West's War on Zimbabwe

by Stephen Gowans

This article originally appeared on Stephen Gowans' web
site, what's left.

"Zimbabwe is on the receiving end of a Western attack
based on punitive financial sanctions."

The crisis in Zimbabwe has intensified. Inflation is
incalculably high. The central bank limits - to an inadequate level - the
amount of money Zimbabweans can withdraw from their bank accounts daily.
Unarmed soldiers riot, their guns kept under lock and key, to prevent an armed
uprising. Hospital staff fail to show up for work. The water authority is short
of chemicals to purify drinking water. Cholera, easily prevented and cured
under normal circumstances, has broken out, leading the government to declare a
humanitarian emergency.

In the West, state officials call for the country's
president, Robert Mugabe, to step down and yield power to the leader of the
largest faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai. In
this, the crisis is directly linked to Mugabe, its solution to Tsvangirai, but
it's never said what Mugabe has done to cause the crisis, or how Tsvangirai's
ascension to the presidency will make it go away.

The causal chain leading to the crisis can be diagrammed
roughly as follows:

In the late 90s, Mugabe's government provokes the
hostility of the West by: (1) intervening militarily in the Democratic Republic
of Congo on the side of the young government of Laurent Kabila, helping to
thwart an invasion by Rwandan and Ugandan forces backed by the US and Britain;
(2) it rejects a pro-foreign investment economic restructuring program the IMF
establishes as a condition for balance of payment support; (3) it accelerates
land redistribution by seizing white-owned farms and thereby committing the
ultimate affront against owners of productive property - expropriation without
compensation. To governments whose foreign policy is based in large measure on
protecting their nationals' ownership rights to foreign productive assets,
expropriation, and especially expropriation without compensation, is
intolerable, and must be punished to deter others from doing the same.

In response, the United States, as prime guarantor of the
imperialist system, introduces the December 2001 Zimbabwe Democracy and
Economic Recovery Act. The act instructs US representatives to international
financial institutions "to oppose and vote against any extension by the
respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of
Zimbabwe; or any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the
Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial
institution."

The act effectively deprives Zimbabwe of foreign currency
required to import necessities from abroad, including chemicals to treat
drinking water. Development aid from the World Bank is also cut off, denying
the country access to funds to upgrade its infrastructure. The central bank
takes measures to mitigate the effects of the act, creating hyper-inflation as
a by-product.

"The US denied Zimbabwe
the means to import goods."

The cause of the crisis, then, can be traced directly to the
West. Rather than banning the export of goods to Zimbabwe, the US denied
Zimbabwe the means to import goods - not trade sanctions, but an act that had
the same effect. To be sure, had the Mugabe government reversed its land reform
program and abided by IMF demands, the crisis would have been averted. But the
trigger was pulled in Washington, London and Brussels, and it is the West,
therefore, that bears the blame.

Sanctions are effectively acts of war, with often
equivalent, and sometimes more devastating, consequences. More than a million
Iraqis died as a result of a decade-long sanctions regime championed by the US
following the 1991 Gulf War. This prompted two political scientists, John and
Karl Mueller, to coin the phrase "sanctions of mass destruction." They noted
that sanctions had "contributed to more deaths in the post Cold War era than
all the weapons of mass destruction in history."

The Western media refer to sanctions on Zimbabwe as targeted
- limited only to high state officials and other individuals. This ignores the
Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act and conceals its devastating
impact, thereby shifting responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophe from
the US to Mugabe.

The cholera outbreak has a parallel in the outbreak of
cholera in Iraq following the Gulf War. Thomas Nagy, a business professor at
George Washington University, cited declassified documents in the September
2001 issue of The Progressive magazine showing that the United States
had deliberately bombed Iraq's drinking water and sanitation facilities,
recognizing that sanctions would prevent Iraq from rebuilding its water
infrastructure and that epidemics of otherwise preventable diseases, cholera
among them, would ensue. Washington, in other words, deliberately created a
humanitarian catastrophe to achieve its goal of regime change. There is a
direct parallel with Zimbabwe - the only difference is that the United States
uses the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act - that is, sanctions of
mass destruction - in place of bombing.

"Sanctions ‘contributed to more deaths in the post Cold
War era than all the weapons of mass destruction in history.'"

Harare's land reform program is one of the principal reasons
the United States has gone to war with Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has redistributed
land previously owned by 4,000 white farmers to 300,000 previously landless
families, descendants of black Africans whose land was stolen by white
settlers. By contrast, South Africa's ANC government has redistributed only
four percent of the 87 percent of land forcibly seized from the indigenous
population by Europeans.

In March, South Africa's cabinet seemed ready to move ahead
with a plan to accelerate agrarian reform. It would abandon the "willing
seller, willing buyer" model insisted on by the West, following in the Mugabe
government's footsteps. Under the plan, thirty percent of farmland would be
redistributed to black farmers by 2014. But the government has since backed
away, its reluctance to move forward based on the following considerations.

1. Most black South Africans are generations removed from
the land, and no longer have the skills and culture necessary to immediately
farm at a high level. An accelerated land reform program would almost certainly
lower production levels, as new farmers played catch up to acquire critical
skills.

2. South Africa is no longer a net exporter of food. An
accelerated land reform program would likely force the country, in the short
term, to rely more heavily on agricultural imports, at a time food prices are
rising globally.

3. There is a danger that fast-track land reform will create
a crisis of capital flight.

4. The dangers of radical land reform in provoking a
backlash from the West are richly evident in the example of Zimbabwe. South
Africa would like to avoid becoming the next Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe's economic crisis is accompanied by a political
crisis. Talks on forming a government of national unity are stalled. Failure to
strike a deal pivots on a single ministry - home affairs. In the West, failure
to consolidate a deal between Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and the two MDC factions
is attributed to Mugabe's intransigence in insisting that he control all key
cabinet posts. It takes two to tango. Tsvangirai has shown little interest in
striking an accord, preferring instead to raise objections to every solution to
the impasse put forward by outside mediators, as Western ambassadors hover
nearby. It's as if, with the country teetering on the edge of collapse, he
doesn't want to do a deal, preferring instead to help hasten the collapse by
throwing up obstacles to an accord, to clear the way for his ascension to the
presidency. When the mediation of former South African president Thambo Mbeki
failed, Tsvangirai asked the regional grouping, the SADC, to intervene. SADC
ordered Zanu-PF and the MDC to share the home affairs ministry. Tsvangirai
refused. Now he wants Mbeki replaced.

"Tsvangirai has shown little interest in striking an
accord."

At the SADC meeting, Mugabe presented a report which alleges
that MDC militias are being trained in
Botswana by Britain, to be deployed to Zimbabwe early in 2009 to foment a civil
war. The turmoil would be used as a pretext for outside military
intervention. This would follow the model used to oust the Haitian government
of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Already, British officials and clergymen are calling
for intervention. British prime minister Gordon Brown says the cholera outbreak
makes Zimbabwe's crisis international, because disease can cross borders. Since
an international crisis is within the purview of the "international community,"
the path is clear for the West and its satellites to step in to set matters
straight

Botswana is decidedly hostile. The country's foreign
minister, Phando Skelemani, says that Zimbabwe's neighbors should impose an oil
blockade to bring the Mugabe government down.

Meanwhile, representatives of the elders, Jimmy Carter, Kofi
Anan and Graca Machel sought to enter Zimbabwe to assess the humanitarian
situation. Inasmuch as an adequate assessment could not be made on the
whistle-stop tour the trio had planned, Harare barred their entry, recognizing
that the trip would simply be used as a platform to declaim on the necessity of
regime change. The elders' humanitarian concern, however, didn't stop the trio
from agreeing that stepped up sanctions - more misery for the population -
would be useful.

The Mugabe government's pursuit of land reform, rejection of
neo-liberal restructuring, and movement to eclipse US imperialism in southern
Africa, has put Zimbabwe on the receiving end of a Western attack based on
punitive financial sanctions. The intention, as is true of all Western
destabilization efforts, has been to make the target country ungovernable,
forcing the government to step down, clearing the way for the ascension of the
West's local errand boys. Owing to the West's attack, Zimbabwe's government is
struggling to provide the population with basic necessities. It can no longer
provide basic sanitation and access to potable water at a sufficient level to
prevent the outbreak of otherwise preventable diseases.

"The intention has been to make the target country
ungovernable."

The replacement of the Mugabe government with one led by the
Movement for Democratic Change, a party created and directed by Western
governments, if it happens, will lead to an improvement in the humanitarian
situation. This won't come about because the MDC is more competent at
governing, but because sanctions will be lifted and access to balance of
payment support and development aid will be restored. Zimbabwe will once again
be able to import adequate amounts of water purification chemicals. The
improving humanitarian situation will be cited as proof the West was right all
along in insisting on a change of government.

The downside is that measures to indigenize the economy - to
place the country's agricultural and mineral wealth in the hands of the black
majority - will be reversed. Mugabe and key members of the state will be
shipped off to The Hague - or attempts will be made to ship them off - to send
a message to others about what befalls those who threaten the dominant mode of
property relations and challenge Western domination. Cowed by the example of
Zimbabwe, Africans in other countries will back away from their own land reform
and economic indigenization demands, and the continent will settle more firmly
into a pattern of neo-colonial subjugation.

Stephen Gowans can be contacted through his web
site, what's left.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

More Stories