History and Evolution of the Enterprise in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa

The invitation to the Zimbabwe delegation came from Mr Yang Jiemian, president of Shanghai Institute of International Studies, who visited Zimbabwe earlier in the year. The Zimbabwe delegation, which included Mr Claudius Chifamba, Secretary of Regional and International Co-operation, and several academics from the University of Zimbabwe comes at a time when China is pushing for a higher profile in African as the continent increases its stature in global affairs. The delegation had the opportunity to exchange views with China’s top academics on African issues including the History and Evolution of the Enterprise in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa

Mugabe and Post-Independent Zimbabwe: The Quest for Self-Sustaining Economic Growth
I am happy to be here in Shanghai, a city which last year hosted the biggest and most successful World Expo to date. Hardworking people from this commercial and port logistics city are busy on the road to build what will surely be the global financial capital. Your friends from Zimbabwe wish you the best in this enterprise in the best interests of human development.

I am delighted by the news announced by the Chinese Ambassador Xin to Zimbabwe, Mr Xin Shunkang, that Vice Premier Wang Qishan will pay a visit to Zimbabwe starting this Monday. This important visit will be a shot in the arm to more Chinese investment in resource-rich and talented Zimbabwe.
On my flight to Shanghai, I was also enchanted to read that Beidahuang, a major agro-industrial enterprise of China, is seriously looking at investing in Zimbabwe to follow the footsteps of China Tobacco, Sinotex and a host of others.

Zimbabwe and the African Renaissance
Tucked neatly into the American sanctions law that is the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act is an ominous clause that says the landlocked African country of a mere 14 million population is a threat to the foreign policy of the only global superpower that is the USA with over 200 million people. Only a proper appreciation of the history of Africa be-knighted engagement with the West in the last four centuries would disabuse one of the element of hyperbole in the clause.

To tell the truth, the economic policies pursued by President Mugabe and his revolutionary Zanu-PF are so pregnant with that hope that can finally put the African population back on the right historical path to sustained economic growth. Access to good quality capital is an essential ingredient of modern economic development. To gain that access one has to have the collateral or the security. For a sovereign nation, that translates into its pool of available resources that can be plied into global demand. More crucial, there has to be a direct relationship, a communion between a people and their resources.

By 2000, Zimbabwe had chosen the path of total and genuine economic freedom. It embarked on an earth- shaking and far-reaching re-arrangement of its economic deck through the reclaiming of the land by the majority indigenous population from an implanted settler minority. Therein lay the genius of President Robert Mugabe insofar as he would resolutely champion this economic axiom in the face of unrelenting and determined resistance by traditional forces of global capital.

A decade later, the Herculean effort, never witnessed on such a scale in the post-independent colonial world, is now bearing fruit through the sprouting of a genuine national business class that has direct access to the land and its all other gifts of economic well-being to humanity. Zimbabwe is nurturing its own middle class, which will enjoy the same attributes as any other on earth. Most pleasing it can deal with that of Europe in global business interchange on the same footing. Sustained economic prosperity is the precursor to all other aspects of social progress. Zimbabwe is poised to play its part in the African Renaissance. Let the show begin!

Mineral Treasure Trove

Zimbabwe is well endowed with natural resources to the extent that it features in the global minerals Olympics. The recent find of diamonds Chiadzwa-Marange fields has been described by The New York Times as quack of history. Twenty to thirty percent of world diamonds are in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe shares 90 percent of global uranium reserves with South Africa. Zimbabwe’s high-quality carbon chrome is in much demand. Indeed, it has the distinction of being the subject of American Congressional law, the Byrd Amendment, during the earlier sanctions of the United Nations on colonial racist Rhodesia. Zimbabwe features top in coal and methane gas reserves on the African continent. The China nuclear industry is exploring uranium in Zimbabwe. We are a major gold producer.
In addition, it has rich agricultural potential. Zimbabwe’s Virginia leaf tobacco is well known to Chinese tobacco merchants. There is beef, cotton, soya, maize among other crops.

Zheng He and Sino-Zimbabwe Trade
Zimbabwe has played a leadership role before. At Great Zimbabwe, the country hosts a walled monument, one of several such sites in the country that bear testimony to a thriving medieval Iron Age civilisation that thrived between 800-1400 AD. There is no parallel in sub-Saharan Africa. Archaeological artefacts found at the site include Ming Dynasty pottery as evidence of Indian Ocean maritime trade championed by Admiral Zheng He and his great but peaceful Chinese armada that reached the shows of East Africa.
Africa on Board

The most exciting news today is the story of the bright economic prospects of the African continent, a place long viewed with the curse of post-independent Afro-pessimism. Suddenly, global fund managers awoke to the fact that African economies have some of the highest investment returns. Even the World Bank, IMF and their other sister financial institutions are joining Chinese banks and other emergent capital markets in showering accolades about the positive African economy. This is a paradigm shift to a bold new world where capital is finally being given unfettered rein to seek the best returns independent of the constraints of political hegemony and racial prejudice.

Southern Africa in the Lead
Zimbabwe is at the heart of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), a sub-regional bloc that is spearheading the development of the 14 countries that are Zimbabwe, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mauritius and Seychelles. Sadc has a huge market of over 200 million people which are some of sub-Saharan Africa’s leading consumers of electricity, transport, telecommunications and other modern goods and services.
Sadc is a global powerhouse in natural resources.

South Africa ranks second in world gold production. Angola is sub-Saharan Africa’s second oil producer. The Democratic Republic of Congo leads in cobalt production. Namibia is a global player in uranium at a time when nuclear energy is in vogue. Zambia has huge copper reserves. Mozambique has discovered the most noteworthy coal reserves of the world in the last 60 years. Zimbabwe’s recent diamonds find is reportedly said to account for more than a quarter of the gem trade, consolidating sub-regional dominance that encompasses Botswana, Namibia, Angola, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Other minerals include manganese and chrome.

The Maxim Gun, the Lock Hold of Good Quality Capital and Super Profits
Ever since the advent of the Industrial Revolution in 18th century England, Africa has been on the receiving end of the deliberate and systematic denial of access to good quality capital that would ensure its sustained economic growth. Europe and its American colonial offshoot saw to it that other races and Africans in particular would be denied this essential tool of human development. The early access to firearms and the ability of factories to produce these weapons saw to it that the dominance of the West would underpin a phenomenally lopsided arrangement in the uneven accumulation of capital by the regions. Herein lies the reality of the stark poverty of Africa in comparison to the opulence of its neighbour continent Europe. Herein lies the root cause of the migration wave across the Mediterranean by hordes of impoverished

Africans to the shores of bright Europe.
The mercantilist slave trade, the wars of imperial plunder and subjugation, the post-independence neo-colonial hegemony of the West were all designed to perpetuate the capital drought of Africa and to keep its population on the margins of history. To the West, the path to development was a zero-sum game where you did all to keep absolute advantage. The West would export hunger, disease and abject poverty to other regions in a duel to enjoy super profits for their business interests and an unparalleled high standard of living for their populace so the latter buys in to an exploitative economic order.

England, The Private Limited Company and Imperialism on the Cheap
Traditional empire building had always relied on the state treasury. It was replete with all political risk to the conqueror, as he had to contend with his taxpayers especially in the event of paltry rewards from the imperial venture.

The classic example of the Manchu Dynasty voluntary scuttling of the ships of the legendary eunuch seafarer Zheng He, who had on several voyages commanded the greatest imperial navy of the time is testimony to the folly of costly imperial grandeur that burdened the taxpayer to no tangible reward. The Dutch and later the English came with a clever innovation in the form of the private limited or joint stock company which would rely on risk capital to embark on imperial ventures. This saw the birth of the vaunted mercantilist companies such as the Dutch East India Company, the Muscovite Company and the British East India

Company to spearhead foreign trade and when needed raise the private mercenary armies to that would break local resistance to imperial overture. After all, the indigenous people were still employing primitive spears, swords, bows and arrows which were no match for the modern firearms of invading Europeans. These trading companies acted as self-styled mini-governments abroad discharging all forms of administration on behalf of the imperial authorities residing back in the metropolitan centres while the shareholders creamed off the profits to fabulous wealth. These privatised mini-governments that were only answerable to shareholders took inordinate risk in their quest for super returns and ended up stoking local anger to generalised rebellion.