According to Farai Shawn Matiashe, there is little chance that the US’s sanctions against Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and other high-ranking officials will allow important debt recovery negotiations to resume.
After the Biden administration sanctioned Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa and other key officials and claimed that his government was arresting and deporting USAID staffers and contractors, ties between Zimbabwe and the US reached a new low.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of the Treasury blacklisted 11 people, including Mnangagwa, and three organizations on March 4th “for their involvement in corruption or serious human rights abuses” in Zimbabwe.
“As long as senior leadership is under sanctions, we are all under sanctions,” tweeted government spokesman Nick Mangwana in response to the penalties. We too are subject to sanctions as long as Corporate Zimbabwe members remain so.
According to a statement from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the designations “are part of a stronger, more targeted sanctions policy the United States is implementing towards Zimbabwe.
The Treasury claimed that Emerson Mnangagwa, the president of Zimbabwe, was implicated in corrupt practices, particularly those involving networks that smuggled gold and diamonds.
A previous sanctions framework that had been in existence for Zimbabwe since 2003 has been replaced by the current one, which is part of the US Global Magnitsky Programme. The first head of state to receive approval under the scheme is Mnangagwa.
The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA), which was revised in 2018 and imposed on former president Robert Mugabe by the US Congress in 2001, is still in effect.
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