Various people in the audience brought up excellent reasons why the west's re-engagement is a bad idea. But the bottom line was it doesn't matter about human rights abuses, it doesn't matter that there is no rule of law, it doesn't matter that Zanu (PF) is a criminal network (all points accepted by the panel) – their view was 're-engagement is the only game in town.'
Among business leaders at the meeting was the head of Anglo-American, who felt the indigenisation policy was being implemented pragmatically as shown by the fact that although they had handed over 51% of their shares, they had still maintained control of the company. The Head of Rio Tinto also managed to get into the select meeting.
Our reporter says people were allowed only one question so it was impossible to get to the nitty-gritty of anything. Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to London, on the other hand, was allowed the final word on everything. He was sitting next to the Head of Anglo and they were clearly on a very friendly basis. Since when has the West stopped engaging Zimbabwe?
Our reporter added: “I wanted to ask what message this sends out to other governments, and did they not think that re-engagement should be based on a moral imperative i.e. only when some reforms have been implemented. If you engage ahead of any reforms, the message appears to be that it doesn’t matter what you do as a government, as long as you hold onto power long enough, through intimidation and rigged elections, eventually the west will come around and the west will still engage with you and throw money your way.”
We agree with the French Ambassador, Laurent Delahousse, who said this week Zimbabwe had imposed sanctions upon itself through corruption, violation of people’s rights and other unacceptable behaviour and should stop blaming other countries. “Zimbabwe should adopt a culture of accountability, deal with corruption, lack of transparency in diamond deals and unclear indigenisation policy and avoid blaming the imagined Western sanctions,” he said.
Post published in: News
This ZimVigil is mad…people in Zimbabwe are suffering a lot…so re-engagement is good and impotant…please leave this in politicians…Zimbabwean problem is a political one….ZimVigil do not push Zimbabwe to the Crisis similar to the South Sudan,Somalia,CAR and Mali to mention a few….please Zimbabwe is a peaceful country without any wantonly killing of its people…..yes in other words i can agree that there is economical problems which need an urgent political solution as i said earlier………
This Zim Vigil group does not represent Zimbabweans @ home but themselves.They chose to leave the country on their own and presented lies to their foreign hosts so as to gain entry and acceptance to stay and work there.Fine.Please NOTE,do your personal business there but don’t purport to represent us. We have a gorvenment representing us as Zimbabweans and not Zim Vigil.