Harare (New Ziana) – United Nations special rapportuer Alena Douhan, who is in the country on a fact-finding mission to assess the impact of two-decades of illegal Western sanctions on Zimbabwe, met President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday for talks.
The West, angered by Zimbabwe’s compulsory acquisition of excess farmland from white farmers to resettle landless peasants, imposed a wide range of sanctions on the country in the early 2 000s.
Just a handful of white farmers owned the bulk of the country’s farmland, a privilege derived from colonial resource dispossession of native blacks.
Nearly half a million landless peasants were resettled under the programme, which the government championed as black economic empowerment.
The Western sanctions, spearheaded by Zimbabwe’s former colonial power Britain and strongly supported by the United States and European Union, froze international development aid and restricted trade and investment to the southern African country over the last two decades.
The government estimates this to have cost the country over US$100 billion, and retarded its economic and social development.
It invited Douhan, who arrived in the country on Monday, to assess the impact of the sanctions, as part of a campaign by the new government to have the illegal penalties lifted.
Details of her closed door meeting with President Mnangagwa were not made available, but sources said the government made a strong case against the sanctions ‘from all angles.’
Later, the UN envoy met Justice and Parliamentary Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi and several other stakeholders for similar briefings.
“I am sure you are all aware that as a country, we are on a drive to ensure that the sanctions are removed,” Ziyambi told journalists.
“We presented to them what we have done in terms of our legislation, in terms of other measures to ensure that the effects of the sanctions on the ordinary people are lessened,” he added.
Zimbabwe has also won strong backing from the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) group, and the African Union in its spirited campaign for the sanctions to be lifted.
SADC has set aside October 25 of every year as Anti-Sanctions Day in solidarity with the country.
New Ziana
