Fear as foreign policy: Unpacking Mnangagwa’s Venezuela dodge

When President Emmerson Mnangagwa this week told Tucker Carlson at the World Governments Summit that Venezuela was “very far away from Zimbabwe” and that Harare did not really know what was happening there, the answer sounded almost absurdly thin.

Distance, after all, has never been a serious metric of political understanding. Yet that moment of apparent emptiness was neither accidental nor naive.

It was the product of a long apprenticeship in sanctions era restraint, a discipline that has trained Zimbabwe’s leadership to treat moral clarity as a strategic risk.

For more than two decades, Zimbabwe has lived under punitive external pressure. Sanctions first imposed broadly and later refined into targeted instruments did not merely constrict the economy. They reshaped political instincts.

I participated in a roundtable panel at the World Governments Summit, hosted by @TuckerCarlson , under the theme “Is the Next Decade African?”

In responding to questions on Africa’s relations with global powers, I emphasised that Zimbabwe is a sovereign state that engages with… pic.twitter.com/axw29KpmlD

— President of Zimbabwe (@edmnangagwa) February 4, 2026

Leaders learned that speech itself could carry consequences. That the wrong sentence, at the wrong forum, could trigger penalties far removed from the theatre of diplomacy. Over time, restraint ceased to be tactical and became habitual. Silence hardened into a governing reflex.

Mnangagwa’s answer in Dubai was therefore not ignorance masquerading as humility. It was the sound of a political system calibrated to minimise risk. Venezuela was not an abstract case study. It was a live wire. That is what makes the response so revealing.

Zimbabwe and Venezuela are not strangers linked only by coincidence of sanction. Their relationship has history, ideology, and reciprocity. Under Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chávez, the two countries forged an explicit political alignment rooted in defiance of Western pressure.

Caracas provided financial and diplomatic support to Harare at the height of Zimbabwe’s confrontation with the United States and Europe. Zimbabwe, in turn, offered solidarity in multilateral forums.

Both framed their struggles as resistance to external domination rather than internal failure. Both leaned heavily on the language of sovereignty and self-determination.

This relationship was reinforced institutionally. Zimbabwe and Venezuela were active participants in the Non-Aligned Movement, a platform premised on resisting great power coercion and defending the autonomy of developing states. Their cooperation was not merely sentimental. It was strategic.

Venezuelan backing mattered when Zimbabwe sought allies in international bodies. That history shaped expectations. When Venezuela became the site of a dramatic confrontation involving direct United States action and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro in early 2026, many assumed Zimbabwe would at least articulate concern grounded in international law and its own stated values.

That expectation was not unreasonable. Zimbabwe was at the time campaigning for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Its bid rested on the language of multilateralism, respect for the UN Charter, and defence of sovereign equality.

Venezuela had publicly supported that bid. Silence in such a moment did not read as neutrality. It read as retreat.

Yet Mnangagwa chose evasion in Dubai. He spoke of distance. Of uncertainty. Of curiosity without judgment. In doing so, he sidestepped the dense web of expectations woven by history. The choice was not cost-free. But it was calculated.

To understand why, one must return to sanctions era restraint. The old US sanctions regime that cast Zimbabwe as a pariah state has been partially dismantled. But what replaced it is more precise and, for political elites, more threatening.

Targeted sanctions under instruments such as the Global Magnitsky Act attach consequences to individuals, not flags. Assets are frozen. Travel is restricted. Financial networks recoil. The pain is personal and immediate.

In that context, moral positioning becomes dangerous.

A clear condemnation of United States actions in Venezuela would have satisfied ideological consistency and historical solidarity. It would also have antagonised Washington at a moment when Harare is seeking debt relief, arrears clearance and a cautious normalisation of relations.

The US Congress still holds the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA). Executive discretion still shapes targeted sanctions lists. Every public statement is read not just for meaning, but for intent.

Mnangagwa understood the asymmetry. Zimbabwe needs Washington more than Washington needs Zimbabwe. That imbalance disciplines speech. That is why the president opted for diplomatic cotton wool.

By claiming insufficient knowledge, he avoided endorsing the argument that sanctions are illegitimate tools of coercion. By refusing to criticise Venezuela’s governance, he avoided validating the Western narrative that Venezuela’s collapse is self-inflicted.

By saying almost nothing, he reduced the risk of saying the wrong thing.

Critics may argue that this was cowardice. That Zimbabwe abdicated moral agency in a moment that demanded it. There is some truth in that charge. But it is incomplete without acknowledging the conditioning effect of prolonged pressure.

Sanctions do not simply constrain policy options. They reshape the psychology of leadership. Over time, leaders learn that principle attracts punishment while ambiguity buys time.

The tragedy is that this adaptation corrodes the very foundations of meaningful foreign policy. Zimbabwe once spoke loudly and sometimes recklessly about sovereignty. That language carried costs, but it also carried coherence.

Today, its foreign policy is increasingly transactional. Values are invoked only when they align neatly with immediate interests. Ideology is dismissed as an inconvenience, something to be traded away for access and acceptance.

Mnangagwa himself once asked, with disarming frankness, who needs ideology when people are making money. That remark now reads less like a provocation and more like a diagnosis.

The Carlson exchange exposed this shift in miniature. Zimbabwe’s response was not shaped by its history with Venezuela, nor by its commitments under the UN Charter, nor by its aspirations on the global stage. It was shaped by the gravitational pull of Washington.

Avoid antagonism. Signal restraint. Say nothing that could be construed as alignment with a sanctioned regime.

In the short term, this may be rational. In the long term, it is corrosive. A state that seeks a seat on the Security Council while declining to articulate positions on breaches of international norms risks appearing unserious.

A liberation movement turned governing party that once thrived on moral argument now struggles to speak in moral sentences.

Distance, in this context, was a metaphor. Not for geography, but for disengagement.

Zimbabwe is not too far from Venezuela to understand what is at stake. It is too deeply enmeshed in a sanctions-disciplined world to speak freely about it. That is the real lesson of Dubai.

Sanctions era restraint has matured into a retreat from moral agency. The two are inseparable.

Whether Zimbabwe can recover a voice that is both principled and pragmatic remains an open question. But until it does, its leaders will continue to walk diplomatic tightropes, speaking softly, hoping that silence will be mistaken for wisdom.

Gabriel Manyati is a Zimbabwean journalist and analyst delivering incisive commentary on politics, human interest stories, and current affairs.