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Gibson Nyikadzino, Correspondent

The global South’s attitudes towards the West are growing more negative than they were two decades ago.

These negative attitudes are borne out of collective western social, economic and political policies against other groups of people.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003, the global financial crisis of 2008, the increased use of sanctions against countries like Zimbabwe, Iran and Venezuela and the military support to Israel and Ukraine to destabilise and disrupt global value chains have evidentiary traits of growing dissatisfaction towards the West.

This also coincided with the process of the de-legitimation of the West which began nearly two decades ago and continues to today with new trends emerging among nations of the South.

It should be stated that this de-legitimation is now largely emanating from the realisation that what the West has been using for years to lure the global South citizens and maintain its   dominance is the loot they stole and slave labour they used to build their economies.

Education, social services and even health institutions in the West that have been sustained by the labour of those from the south, who migrated under the globalisation pretext, are being challenged with new south-south partnerships.

Economies in the South have been growing since the decade of economic boom (2003-2013) that saw countries like China, India, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) having alternative services that challenged the western established ones.

For global South citizens, Western Europe and the US have traditionally been prime destinations of  much of what its citizens have been yearning for, yet the world has changed.

Scientific innovation, technology, medical and pharmaceutical research are no longer preserves of the collective West.

One of the leading countries enjoying the benefits of scientific innovation and pharmaceutical dominance is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Unfortunately, western misinformation, propaganda and disinformation about Iran has hypnotised some global South citizens and restricted their knowledge of Iran to know only about sanctions imposed on it by the West.

While Iran has been disparaged, there are unique experiences it is providing in cultural fields of the medical and health tourism sectors which Zimbabwe is ready to exploit as witnessed by the signing of bilateral agreements between the two countries when Iran’s President Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi visited Zimbabwe last June.

Breaking prejudices

Cultural diplomacy, which is the exchange of ideas, information, art and other aspects of culture among nations and their peoples to foster mutual understanding is a prime currency that Iran and Zimbabwe are using.

Zimbabwe stands to benefit from Iran, and vice-versa.

Over the past few years, Iran has positioned itself as a major destination for health tourism. It has used its rich history and a thousand years of medical knowledge, ethics and technology to modernise its facilities through science and innovation.

Likewise, Zimbabwe also shares a vast wealth of history of indigenous knowledge systems that have been useful over the years, which however, need to be enhanced through scientific research and development, as Iran has done, and is doing.

By so doing, both Iran and Zimbabwe are establishing their visibility and reclaiming their identities by regaining their national freedoms and breaking away from old colonial narratives that see success as products of western association.

According to statistics, Iran is ranked first in the Middle East in relation to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), ranked 27th among 200 countries in the field of neurology and  ranked first in the Eastern Mediterranean in terms of screening, optometry and ophthalmology services.

What has made Iran a popular destination for medical or health tourism are its high quality healthcare services and that the costs of almost all procedures are lower than in other countries, like Turkey, India, Mexico and Thailand.

For example, IVF surgery in Iran costs US$1 300 while in the US the same procedure costs US$15 000; and in Thailand, Singapore and India it costs US$7 500, $6 000 and $4 500 respectively.

Between 2007 and 2019, the number of health tourists that visited Iran increased from 20 000 to 300 000, generating an estimated revenue of US$1,2 billion.

To create trust and dialogue in cultural programmes, Zimbabwe and Iran are building their policy ideas based on these new  boundaries of co-operation that have been primary targets of the West through sanctions, that is, the health sector.

Such exchanges are key to facilitate access to inter-cultural dialogue and talks, allowing people to learn more about one another, other cultures and different ways of life. This also allows for prejudices to be broken down.

Mission possible

Through culture, Iran and Zimbabwe are on the road to redeeming their global positions from being labelled pariah states in the eyes of the global North.

Due to a confluence of factors including rapidly expanding globalisation and increasingly intricate geopolitics, the two countries were sanctioned,  conferred labels and had their assets frozen.

To showcase opportunities for Iran and Zimbabwe’s cultural exchanges in all their splendour (classical, modern and traditional) new mechanisms to programme this are also required.

The depth of cultural exchanges should also be reflected in the traditional manifestations of the shared bilateral relations.

Both countries need to have these cultural exchanges in various sectors like tourism, education and media co-operation enhanced based on their already existing cordial political relations.

To some, this could be interpreted as a disdain towards neo-liberalism, but it should be restated that the people of these two countries have been victims of illegal economic sanctions, hence this bad history with the West triggered a search of cultural sovereignty.

In addition to giving the people of Iran and Zimbabwe an opportunity to see the importance of what their governments are doing, even with the help of other non-state actors, cultural co-operation is key on creating friendly communication atmospheres by our people.