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WHILE there can be no doubt that sanctions caused a great deal of damage to Zimbabwe and the economic wellbeing of all Zimbabweans, the advent of the Second Republic and the pro-growth strategies introduced also show that adversity can be the mother of invention and innovation.
Today, Zimbabwe has one of the highest growth rates in the world, 4,8 percent this year according to the International Monetary Fund, an organisation that tends to be conservative in its estimates and which would prefer to underestimate than overestimate, so there is a reasonable chance that the final figure will be higher.
The strong growth has been the result of switching to our own resources, and our own people and our own skills, to grow the economy rather than relying on hand-outs and on others.
There had been a growing trend in the years before sanctions were applied to be making our economic plans on the basis that outside financing and other external assistance would be the prime driver of growth.
So when sanctions were imposed by the United States, the United Kingdom and others 22 years ago, largely as “punishment” for land reform whatever the published reasons were, they did have a serious effect as they knocked out a principal driver of economic growth.
But at the same time there was little enthusiasm for seeking innovative and workable solutions that would use other ways of driving growth.
The same people and countries who imposed the sanctions had also created a global system for development that was not necessarily the best available, although it benefited them, and in some respects was designed to create dependency syndromes, whereby developing countries would be anxious to support their “patrons” in the developing world.
Some of this was a holdover from the age of colonial empires, some of it was generated during the Cold War, but in both cases it did stifle innovation, imagination and other positive virtues.
President Mnangagwa realised this, and as soon as he was sworn in to fill the vacant Presidency, and especially when he won his first term, he was preaching the need for Zimbabweans to apply their skills to their resources while opening the doors to external investors.
From the beginning he has pushed innovation and practical research and has increasingly formalised this approach and made it one of the central pillars of the new Zimbabwean economy.
At the same time he demanded from a new team of technocrats that they overhauled Zimbabwe’s national finances and ensured that a respectable slice of tax and other revenue was devoted to capital spending and economic and social infrastructure, the sort of thing that had become associated with foreign handouts and loans, rather than the sort of thing that we should be doing for ourselves.
Even the Government’s social development spending changed its emphasis rather dramatically.
For example, instead of having to find large sums every year to buy grain for food aid, the decision was taken to find innovative ways farmers could grow enough food for their families and a lot more for sale to the non-farming population, thus feeding the whole country and at the same time converting subsistence farmers into businesspeople, with a real income.
In many ways the agricultural revolution we have seen over the last few years epitomises much of the Second Republic growth strategy.
It was built on major innovation in practical research for a start. Although everyone now seems to think Pfumvudza/Intwasa is the obvious way to farm in a country that leans a bit too far to the semi-arid category and suffers from climate change, that was not the case four or five years ago when the concept was still being tested and sold to the farming communities.
Secondly it was built on a zero tolerance to corruption, so what money was available for inputs went to the farmers who needed inputs, rather than sticking to other hands on route.
Thirdly it was built on an effective support system for the farmers, from having extension workers physically present to advise and check to having guaranteed markets for every tonne produced.
Innovation at the top, with the President, cascaded down the line through research works and those whose job was to apply the research and then all the way to the farmers, who seized the opportunity, dumped several generations of farming practice once they saw there was something better, to the officials who now have to figure out how to sell surpluses rather than how to make up deficits.
The revolution in many ways was the complement of the land reform. Many people had acquired land rights, and many could not use them since the older ways of raising funds for inputs and the like were simply not available.
The innovations in Government made them available, and that is one reason why agriculture has developed. We now grow more than we ever did in the days before land reform. The new farmers are already more productive and getting better all the time.
Mining was allowed to grow very fast with a policy that was fair to genuine investors prepared to put in their money, follow the labour and tax laws, and generally become part of Zimbabwe.
The huge growth not only created the major export markets, but also drove a lot of the other sectors of the economy by sourcing more goods locally and provided some welcome revenue for the Government through acceptance of the policy of fair royalties.
Most mining companies have also accepted the need to do ever more processing in Zimbabwe.
Now, if sanctions were removed, we would not be returning to the old pre-sanctions systems, or rather we would be daft to do so and such a return would possibly create more damage than the original imposition of sanctions.
But if we regained our full links to the international finance agencies, and we now have a good if non-financial relationship with them as the recent IMF team visit showed, and if our business sectors and their customers and suppliers outside the country had better access to the global banking system, we would be able to accelerate our development.
An end to sanctions is not a survival ploy.
We have already survived and are starting to flourish.
Sanctions taught us to rely on ourselves primarily and harness our own resources and our own strengths, and we have now done that successfully.
We must keep pushing hard to end the whole sanctions regime but our reason and need has changed since they were imposed.
Whatever damage was done has now largely been done, so the end of sanctions means we can move forward faster rather than retrace any steps.
Even as we continue to gnaw away at some of the measures by some countries, and the rapidly growing degree of normality with the European Union is the most obvious, we also need to keep that new idealism that we can create our own future, the future we want rather than the future others want.
Online Reporter