“To get to the root of a murder, interview the blacksmith who made the machete,” runs the Igbo proverb, lending credence to Zanu-PF’s attempt to blame every social ill and government failure in Zimbabwe on Western sanctions.
Recently the Zanu-PF-controlled information and publicity ministry announced that 2.2-million signatures had been garnered for the party’s anti-sanctions petition and 800 000 more remained to be collected.
Ministry official Anywhere Matambudzi said the signatures would be submitted to the Southern African Development Community for a resolution to end the restrictions.
Zanu-PF said it was thinking about using the petition as a legal basis for a damages suit against the United States and European Union states that have imposed sanctions.
Sanctions may affect only the foreign investment and travel privileges of about 200 cronies of Robert Mugabe, but they are blamed for everything from the potholes in the roads to the unavailability of certain dishes displayed on hotel menus and the pathetic service offered by mobile phone operators.
Of course, the economic meltdown has nothing to do with Mugabe’s destruction of the country’s historic mainstay, commercial agriculture.
Last month Deputy President Joyce Majuru had her own personal run-in with the dastardly West, when she blamed sanctions for the three hours she had spent cooling her heels in a malfunctioning lift at Zanu-PF’s headquarters.
Sanctions have even undermined the effectiveness of Zimbabwe’s internationally admired police service, which asks citizens reporting offences to provide transport to the scene of the crime because it has no money for fuel.
The solution, which had seemed so elusive, is really simple: scrap sanctions and Zimbabwe’s long economic nightmare will disappear. Not.