Zimbabwe Peacebuilding Initiative (ZimPI) and the Zimbabwe Information Centre Australia (ZIC) have been campaigning for the cancellation of “smart sanctions” against certain people in Zimbabwe because they are now generalised financial sanctions against the whole country with a cruel impact on the population, years after the Mugabe regime ended in 2017.
So far, the governments of the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the European Commission have refused to lift the sanctions, exposing them to the accusation that they are punishing Zimbabwe in their growing confrontation with China and Russia.
On November 9, 2024, ZimPI leader, Senator Sekai Holland, spoke at a joint event of the Broad Alliance Against Sanctions (BAAS)and the Movement Against Zimbabwe Sanctions (MAZS). She urged the sanctioning governments to remove the punitive sanctions, “which are not smart at all … The struggle continues until victory.”
Senator Holland congratulated and thanked MAZS and urged it to convene a broad meeting soon which could strongly project the call for all Zimbabweans to sign the ZIC anti-sanctions petition.
BAAS has maintained a tent protest opposite the US Embassy in Harare since March 29, 2019, and Senator Holland and her husband Jim took part in its program on Friday October 25, 2024, the SADC Annual Anti-Sanctions Day.
Zimbabwe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF, was holding its annual conference in Bulawayo that week, and on October 25, President Mnangagwa used the language of the ZIC petition to denounce the mis-named smart sanctions as “cruel, irrational and holding back the country”. On August 20, 2024, ZIC Secretary Peter Murphy used this language in a radio interview with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
Since then BAAS has launched the campaign for three million signatures on the anti-sanctions petition drafted by ZIC.
You can sign the online petition here: https://chng.it/tm62HLSy.
