Survival in a Hostile Global Environment: Zimbabwe’s Alternative Gold Trade as a Soft Power Interventionist Tact
Sadiki Maeresera 
Issue: Vol.4 No.14 Special Issue Article 2 pp.16-24
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20234143 | Published online 20th December, 2023
© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This paper examined the trajectory of Zimbabwe’s gold trade as a soft power strategy towards survival in the brutal global economic environment and explored the concomitant implications this has had on the country’s relations with the global North. Moreover, the paper demystified the Gold Mafia documentary as a means to taint Zimbabwe’s economic survival efforts. Of particular importance is how the neo-imperialist forces co-opted, criminalised and demonised Zimbabwe’s efforts to engage in gold trade with friendly states including China, United Arab Emirates and South Africa among others. In the Aljazeera documentary dubbed Gold Mafia, an attempt was made through plain media propaganda to make Zimbabwe’s governmental institutions accomplices in illicit gold trade and leakages. The idea was to make Zimbabwe appear as a country that lacks transparency and accountability in addition to non-conformity to the so-called international standards which are a mere popularisation of the Western established monopoly. Against this backdrop, it can be argued that the documentary was a means to a political end; the end being to demonise Zimbabwe’s soft power interventionist tact. Furthermore, the objective of the propaganda was to further isolate Zimbabwe as well as to chase away potential investors. With this said, this paper constitutes an epistemic contribution to knowledge on Zimbabwe’s soft power survival strategies, neo-imperialist counterstrategies and the way forward towards sustaining survival in the hostile global environment.
Keywords: Gold Trade, Soft Power, Zimbabwe, Gold Mafia.
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Sadiki Maeresera holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Republic of South Africa. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Peace Security and Society at the University of Zimbabwe. Dr. Maeresera is also a Visiting Research Fellow in National Security, Civil Military Relations and Integrated Peace Support Missions at the Institute of Strategic Research and Analysis, Zimbabwe National Defence University and the School of Military Science, University of Namibia.
Maeresera, Sadiki. “Survival in a Hostile Global Environment: Zimbabwe’s Alternative Gold Trade as a Soft Power Interventionist Tact .” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 4, no.14 Special Issue (2023): 16-24. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20234143
© 2023 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
