The United States of America Government has extended Zimbabwean sanctions to March 2019.
The United States President Donald Trump, in a text of a Notice on the extension of embargoes to the Southern African country, says the actions and policies of Zimbabwean persons under sanctions continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the policy of the United States.
“For this reason, the national emergency declared on March 6, 2003, and the measures adopted on that date, on November 22, 2005, and on July 25, 2008, to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond March 6, 2019,” the Notice reads.
“Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13288.”
US enacted the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA), which imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe. As an act to deal with what the Western power calls “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the foreign policy of the United States constituted by the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Zimbabwe and other persons to undermine Zimbabwe’s democratic processes or institutions.
The act targeted the former leader Robert Mugabe and the current President Emmerson Mnangagwa for what the US has called actions undermining democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe.
“These actions and policies had contributed to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law in Zimbabwe, to politically motivated violence and intimidation in that country, and to political and economic instability in the southern African region,” the US Notice says.
Sanctions have authorized the blocking of property to people and institutions that were targeted by the US.
The Zimbabwean government has always been calling sanctions “illegal” and advocated for their removal.
Other countries on the African continent including South Africa have also been vocal in calling for the removal of economic sanctions on Zimbabwe.