Sundaymail EditorZimbabweans are the biggest saboteurs of foreign investment inflow into the country. We are shooting ourselves in the foot everyday. No wonder why some of us are now “crippled”.
Foreigners are actually better ambassadors than most of us when it comes to understanding and interpreting our simple and crystal clear policies with zest.
We are always at the forefront to sacrilegiously bring myths, unnecessary confusion and bad lies about our policies. For the hell of it!
I wonder why we are so hellbent on scaring the hell out of the already coward capital away. Who doesn’t know that capital is the biggest coward? When fought, it doesn’t fight back, it just takes to its heels, like a headless chicken, as fast as it can go. Without looking back.
While the onion of illegal and donkey years sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe continues to peel off, layer by layer, from time to time; eventually we are going to wake up to the hitherto uncomprehended realisation that we ourselves are the biggest sanctions to the economy.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or one with some lavish sagacity to realise that Zimbabweans in general and the opposition political parties, in particular, find relevance from caricaturing a silhouette of Zimbabwe that is far removed from the bona fide picture.
If lies are the water, they are the fish. They have to tell half truths and mostly lies in order for them to thrive. Sad reality.
While even the British (who have mobilised the now not-so-entirely removed EU sanctions on Zimbabwe) can vividly see clarity and consistency in our policies, we want to make sure that it is rather otherwise.
Take, for instance, the confession by Ms Catriona Laing, British Ambassador to Harare, that: “I think there is a very positive feeling on both sides that there are opportunities here for British companies to take advantage of. I think we are (now) in a different position. The Zim-Asset process itself sets out very clearly what the Government’s policy is.”
Even the head of the British trade delegation that recently came to have a Damascene encounter in Harare, Mr Alex Lambeth, testified as follows: “We will be going back home with a very positive message and certainly hope to, in the future, build upon this.”
What a move from Godfrey Huggins’ (the first Federation prime minister) popular colonial chant that: “The relationship that exists between whites and blacks is the same as that exists between the rider and his horse.”What is, however, disappointing is that we still have Zimbabweans who are deliberately misinforming the world about our policy positions and economic status, to discourage investment.
Take, for instance, our very own former Economic Planning and Investment Promotion Minister, Dr Tapiwa Mashakada, now president of the Zimbabwe Economic Policy Institute.
Writing in the Zimbabwe Independent of October 24, he said: “Zim-Asset is a thumbsucking document which is haphazard . . . It is a high-sounding nothing . . . Zim-Asset is not a policy but simply a political statement that does not conform to any recognised canon of economic planning . . .
“Zim-Asset has plunged the economy into a state of deflation,” and just about every other regular curse you can expect to read from the opposition dictionary. For starters, try and reconcile his musings with the pronouncements of Ms Laing. Dr Mashakada used to be the frontman in luring foreign investment into Zimbabwe, and many foreign officials responsible for influencing investment decisions to Zimbabwe.
In my view, it is unpatriotic of him to then attempt to demobilise the very investment that he sought to mobilise during the inclusive Government era for obvious reasons that his party is no longer in power. To achieve this, Dr Mashakada went to the extent of misrepresenting facts, in his article, in his relentless quest to “mushroom” foreign investors. (I hear mushroom is fed with rubbish and kept in darkness, but remains white).
He hallucinated, in the same article, that: “Since the launch of Zim-Asset, the economy has shed nearly 300 000 jobs in the manufacturing sector.”
For someone who once pointed out in the National Assembly, on September 16, 2013, that “the other problem, people are economic with the truth,” (and worse still took an oath to “be faithful to Zimbabwe,” as a Member of Parliament) we surely don’t expect Dr Mashakada to break his own cardinal rule by feeding us with “rubbish”.
How can one sector of the economy, the Zimbabwean economy that is, shed such a quantum of jobs in just 11 months, when average industrial capacity utilisation has just relatively fallen down by only 3 percent (according to the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries)?
If we can hypothesise further, he is telling us that every 1 percent fall in average capacity utilisation results in 100 000 job losses in the manufacturing sector. For a sector that has fallen in capacity utilisation by 21 percent since 2011, does Dr Mashakada imply, therefore, that manufacturing has lost 2,1 million jobs since 2011?
Did we even have jobs as much as two million in the manufacturing sector since 2009? Or in the entire economy?
Not on your life!
If you ask Dr Mashakada the rate of unemployment in Zimbabwe, he will tell you it’s 80 percent, just like what the rest of the opposition does.
Now, if we subtract 80 percent from Zimbabwe’s economically active (6,083 million), it would imply that only 1,2 million people are employed in all the economic sectors of Zimbabwe.
But then, he implies that one sector has shed 2,1 million jobs since 2011, from a country with a total employment of 1,2 million jobs!
This is the kind of “rubbish” that foreigners are being fed while being kept in the dark. Perhaps that’s why they sometimes get annoyed and start to shoot in the dark, randomly. The people who we can actually forgive if they are to lie to us about job losses in the economy should be those from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).
But, alas, ZCTU is actually telling us that the first four months of 2014 saw 1 900 people losing their jobs. For one year, that would hypothetically average about 6 000.
The Retrenchment Board figures also reveal that 5 600 workers were retrenched in the first 10 months of 2014. For us to then say the manufacturing sector, one sector only, has shed 300 000 jobs since the launch of Zim-Asset is a big lie. Members of the opposition are, presumably, citizens of Zimbabwe too.
They must not act like they are exempted from the Constitutional duty of citizens “to the best of their ability, defend Zimbabwe and its sovereignty”.
How ironic that they disrespect the very Constitution whose writing they were part of and vowed to respect!
If it’s not Dr Mashakada, it’s Mr Tendai Biti. In June, the Renewal Team frontman and former Finance Minister was quoted as saying: “Mark my words, by August, this country will be dead.”
The sad thing is that our media is amnesiac. Nobody bothered to ask Mr Biti if this is now a ghost of Zimbabwe since the real Zimbabwe “died” three months ago.
All these pronouncements, albeit baseless, when said by former Cabinet ministers who were once responsible for economic ministries, give a wrong impression about Zimbabwe to the world.
Who would want to come and invest in a Zimbabwe that is “dying” in three months?
Come September, the media did not even think twice in wasting space to accommodate Mr Biti’s new sentiments: “This clueless Government will fumble and tumble for six months and there will hardly be any economy to talk about after that. At most, it will take 12 months before we get stuck at the bottom of the economic trough and it will be very, very difficult to pull out.” Once again, more confusion to foreign investors. No wonder why they are always taking a wait-and-see stance on Zimbabwe.
At a Sapes Trust discussion last month, Mr Biti ridiculed the President’s visit to China, saying: “These shouts by Zanu-PF of mega deals from China are mega lies as the MoUs are not bankable. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa brought a suitcase full of MoUs, but they are useless.”
While Mr Biti was busy saying that, cellular phone service provider NetOne was busy, too, receiving a large consignment of equipment from a US$218 million loan deal birthed from one of those “mega lies”. The long and short of this is that we are imposing hurtful sanctions on ourselves, yet expect Zimbabwe to be better.
Both the opposition and the ruling party should sing from the same hymn when it comes to issues of economic development. We should all wear our patriotism jackets, whether it’s summer or winter.
It is foolhardy for any political party that hopes to be a ruling party one day to sabotage the economic development of Zimbabwe since it will be faced with the very challenges assuming it will one day get into power.
Russia was here a few weeks ago, followed by Britain. A high-powered Danish delegation was here last week, too.
Tomorrow, Mauritius is hosting a buyers-sellers event in Harare, focusing on manufactured products. Mauritius is also home to businessman Mr James Benoit, who bought shares in Kingdom Bank, now AfrAsia.
Who forgets his widely-quoted interview with a Mauritius magazine, when he said: “If you believe in the long-term future, now is the time to invest here (Zimbabwe). It’s strategic . . . It is a resource-rich country, people are educated and there’s strong entrepreneurial culture,” and all genuine praises some of us Zimbabweans normally don’t want to tell to foreigners, opting for lies.
What is clear here is that international investors are interested in Zimbabwe and we just have to remove the barriers of all manner which lie in the way.
It must be noted here that the indigenisation law is not a barrier because it actually protects the foreigners’ investments by involving locals in projects. The real barriers are coming from the false perceptions that we are seeding in the minds of foreign investors.
There are some who want foreigners to read “Hell Come to Zimbabwe,” where it reads: “Welcome to Zimbabwe.”
We are a safe investment destination.
And still on sign posts, while travelling on one of the highways of South Africa, some weeks back, I was shocked to read a road sign with the message: “High Crime Area. Do Not Stop.”
I thought to myself then that back to Zimbabwe, at a very spot with similar geographic characteristics, there will be a sign reading, “Resting Place 100m.”
Mr James Benoit confirmed that when he said: “Look, you go to many Asian countries, like the Philippines, for example, and you have to have bodyguards with you. You don’t need that in Zimbabwe.”
As Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Engineer Walter Mzembi has been preaching: “Therefore your gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day or night, that men may bring to you the wealth of the Gentiles, and their kings in procession” (Isaiah 60:11).
We need a paradigm transformation in Zimbabwe, inspired by the simple philosophy that what’s good or bad for Zimbabwe is equally good or bad for us, too, respectively.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter