adminretailers against unjustified price increases on selected basic commodities. The honourable Minister even had the audacity to say that the unilateral price increases by business were rendering recent increases in civil servants’ salaries useless.
What a façade? Whom does he want to fool? Did he really expect no domino effect from his pre-mediated reintroduction of duty on certain basic and non-basic commodities? Does he really expect everyone to buy into his stage-managed backlash against business on the so-called unilateral price increases?
Minister Biti definitely knew that our industries, the few that have not imploded due to the debilitating effects of sanctions, were operating at a generous capacity approximation of 40 percent. Clearly, the industries are limping and not yet adequately capacitated to meet local demand hence the need to supplement them with 60 percent foreign imports.
Introduction of duty on these foreign imports therefore led to shortages. Such permutations, even to a greenhorn economist, will mean that there will be higher demand for the under-supplied goods and as a result translate to a notable increase in prices of the goods under consideration.
Vividly, the increase in prices of basic goods was a market driven change directly induced by the restoration of duty on certain basic commodities. In this regard, Minister Biti’s glaringly empty threats against business were calculated to hoodwink the poor into believing that he is a people-oriented Minister yet he is the exact opposite.
This was merely a futile bid to pull wool over the faces of the disaffected consumers. It should be put on record that the restoration of duty on some basic commodities was ill-advised as the prevailing economic ambience was irrefutably not yet ripe for such a drastic measure. The measure was fully implemented with ulterior intentions to sustain the interests of the business elites in line with publicised convictions of the so-called Breton Woods Institutions that exclusively espouse pro-elite and anti-people policies meant to entrench capitalism, which is the pillar of Western hegemony.
Not so long ago, the Minister told all and sundry that he was stoically against the increment of civil servants’ salaries simply because the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had advised that government had no money and capacity to absorb such increments. Instead of awarding the salary increments, Biti and his imperial IMF advisors proposed a reduction in the civil service salary bill, which in other words meant a cut in the civil servants’ paltry earnings.
Biti also patently showed that he was a faithful follower of IMF prescriptions when he frantically tried to cajole his government partners into supporting his position to declare Zimbabwe a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) so as to surrender its fate to the selfish dictates of the IMF.
The HIPC is a pro-elite facility that allegedly provides debt relief and low-interest loans to cancel or reduce external debt repayment of heavily indebted countries. Nonetheless, this assistance, like all other imperial machinations, is typically hinged upon conditions that forces governments of the indebted countries to categorically acquiesce to implementing specific economic management and performance targets.
To those that are not forgetful, these conditions are a euphemism for adopting IMF’s Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP). Yes, that ignominious programme that caused untold suffering in
Zimbabwe through retrenchments, inflation, currency devaluation and other infamous economic ills that drastically reduced this beautiful country into a pariah state in the last decade.
Like ESAP, the HIPC route strictly encourages the privatisation of utilities, which ultimately leads to an unparalleled rise in the cost of services beyond the poor citizen’s ability to pay. In a nutshell, the HIPC is a heinous economic route that is designed to protect the interests of creditors at the expense of a country’s populace. It forces nations to spend more on servicing debts rather than on actively investing in programmes that can effectively reduce poverty and improve social services such as the indigenisation and economic empowerment policy.
It can be discerned that the HIPC route, which pummels the workers into destitution but concomitantly uplifts the elite, coalesce well into Biti’s own personal and well orchestrated initiatives to starve workers whilst promoting the interests of ministers and other government executives. While the Minister spiritedly opposed salary increments for civil servants, he did not have any qualms in approving the purchase of top of the range vehicles for Cabinet Ministers, their deputies and other senior officials for about US$10million.
In pro-elite style, Biti easily approved the purchase of 40, 2011 Limited Edition Jeep Grand Cherokees for cabinet ministers, 40 Land Cruisers V8 SUVs for Deputy Ministers and 50 Prados for Permanent Secretaries. Yet if it was not for the timely intervention of President Mugabe, he had sworn never to increase salaries of the poverty battered civil workforce.
Similarly, in his wisdom, Biti reintroduced the topical duty on certain commodities to protect local businesspeople (the elite) against international competition while ignoring the resultant increase in prices that will eat deep into the workers’ pockets. In effect, the minister had just conveniently removed the economic albatross from the necks of the privileged businesspeople only to squarely repose it on the fragile necks of the struggling workers.
Questions therefore arise as to why Biti is so inimical to addressing the plight of workers. It can be argued that these austerity measures directed specifically at workers are meant to nurture a restless workforce that will become a fertile component for building a protest vote that almost delivered power to the MDC-T in 2008.
The MDC-T breeds on a disgruntled workforce as their tactics are largely steeped towards the politics of the ‘stomach’. True to the words of Chester Crocker, they not only want to make the economy “scream” but the workers too. In this sense, it can be argued that the minister, in order to perpetuate the worker’s suffering, deliberately reintroduced duty on some basic commodities in order to counter and erode benefits availed to civil servants through increments engineered by President Mugabe. It is therefore under such disillusionment that we dismiss Biti’s condemnation of price increases by business as a charade to hoodwink the economically disempowered workers. It is a clear case of someone shedding crocodile tears.
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