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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
Indeed, when will the imperialist West recall or kill in loco its political virus – otherwise popularly known as economic embargo or economic sanctions – which has long blighted millions of Zimbabwean lives by snatching jobs from surprised hands and food from gapping mouths of workers and their families well before the current worldwide pandemic set in, aggravating the plight of our people.

When the immediate past American president Donald Trump was bungling his way out of office, courting impeachment in the process and leaving his country with the highest corona infection rate in the world, Zimbabweans will no doubt have hoped that one of incoming United States president Joe Biden’s first act in power would be a positive response to a call by the Southern African Development Community, the African Union and the rest of the progressive world for the West, particularly America with its Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act under which sanctions were imposed, and her closest ally Britain, would immediately declare the sanctions on our country null and void with the rest of Europe kow towing to that decision.

But, alas, what do very expectant Zimbabweans with their ears to the ground hear.

A week ago the Voice of America, White House’s main medium of communication particularly to the outside world, literally went berserk asking Zimbabwean women and probably other females around the globe what they felt about that super power having a woman, Kamala Harris as its Vice President.

Some Zimbabwean respondents interlocuting with a VOA correspondent literally went hysterical, praising America for what they described as a unique example for other countries to follow by having a woman as the second most powerful person in American politics.

One Zimbabwean woman went further to say our own country needed a similar “gender meal” as the one that the USA provided its people with Kamala Harris in the second highest pinnacle of American power.

But either out of desire to impress Americans, or due to short memories for which no one can forgive them, the women in point should in fact have proudly stated that their own beloved country, Zimbabwe, indeed did serve such a “gender meal” to her own people in Vice President Joice Mujuru long before America, one of the oldest democracies on planet earth, did hoist Kamala Harris to the second highest echelons of power in USA history.

But come to think of it, the American Vice President is said to be of Asian descent, and not an African American, something that should have sent the blood of Zimbabwean women curdling with warmth in their vessels to celebrate her rise to power.

In the mid 70’s while on a study tour of America from Zambia where I worked as a senior journalist at the Times of Zambia, this writer spent a day exploring Atlanta, Georgia, where Kamala Harris hails.

It felt as though I was back home in an African city with a black Atlanta wherever I looked and with two black female receptionists at a hotel where I booked in whispering audibly to each other and saying that they wished they could be intimate with me “to have a feel of Africa, home sweet home”.

Therefore, an African American woman, or for that matter a native American (Indian) woman being made second president of that super power would have made logical sense to me as a move to compensate black African slaves and native Americans for the suppression they suffered at the hands of whites who invaded and colonised the latter’s native country to rule it to this very day.

But of course, if Zimbabweans wish to have a second helping of the “gender meal” this must depend on whether a majority of our people, and not just a few women, savoured the taste of the first Joice Mujuru “gender dish.”

Just days ago, VOA correspondents zeroed in on the Far East and the Middle East as far nearer home as Somalia relaying to those countries policies that new American government leaders would adhere to or change in conformity with the Joe Biden administration.

That the dominant sanctions issue on Zimbabwe did not feature whatsoever in VOA interlocutions makes one wonder if the plight of Zimbabweans due to economic sanctions is not anything to worry about in the American corridors of power, or if indeed the economic embargo is regarded as a desirable punishment for the newly independent state of Zimbabwe reuniting its people through land reforms with their soil stolen from them in the first place.

In fact, it would seem for the West that the Covid-19 pandemic has become a cover or escapist for the heavy toll that the illegal sanctions have long had on the lives of Zimbabweans, so that the sanctions issue is now regarded by those who imposed the embargo as a cover for their satanic action against an innocent people striving for self-determination after long years of white, racist colonial rule.

In fact, one senior Zanu-PF political insider this week bemoaned the death of former Foreign Affairs Minister and national hero, Dr Sibusiso B Moyo, whom he said had made tremendous progress in the Government’s re-engagement programme with the West and the rest of the world and wondered what the way forward would be like with Dr Moyo gone.

Which now raises the if, if, and if illegal Western sanctions on Zimbabwe will be removed anytime soon to lessen the economic and social burden on Zimbabwe imposed by coronavirus.

But leaders of Big Brother countries that regard smaller nations such as ours as political Lilliputians to kick around like footballs must be reminded that the eye of the Almighty God who created those Lilliputians in His own image and likeness is ubiquitous and sees what goes on so that those self-anointed world political gurus will have to account for their diabolic actions on that great, great judgment day.