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Joram Nyathi Spectrum
ONE of the biggest weaknesses and pitfalls of Zimbabwe’s opposition leaders is their refusal, or inability, to acknowledge the better side and contributions of those they seek to replace, and to pretend that they can reinvent the wheel by seeking to condemn wholesale what those who came before them have done or accomplished.
MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai came onto the political scene all puffed up, believing he was a messiah come to save Zimbabweans from a “monster” which had chased away the good white farmer, telling the natives that they needed human rights and democracy more than they did their land and its mineral resources.
Zimbabweans felt otherwise, hence the land reform was entrenched in the new Constitution. Former Vice President Dr Joice Mujuru flew her own kite this week and in doing so proved she is no different by pilfering Zanu-PF ideas without acknowledgement. In trying to sound different from Zanu-PF and President Mugabe, she turned MDC-T’s Tsvangirai into a virtuoso ventriloquist in which she is a willing dummy.
Which Zanu-PF policies or ideas, one might ask? A few examples should suffice. They will “respect and restore the role of traditional leaders”. Talk to Chief Fortune Charumbira on that one.
They say they want to “link salaries and wages to productivity”. One only needs to read Zim-Asset’s results-based management system. That also directly addresses the issue of parastatals and State enterprises — that they “will not enjoy State subsidies indefinitely”. There is nothing original about national healing beside the “compassionate” and “spiritual” dimension. Irrigation infrastructure has been a priority of Government in trying to address the food security cluster under Zim-Asset.
There are already deals in this regard with Brazil and Belarus supplying irrigation equipment. Dr Mujuru’s kite displays slogans about “buy local”, “import substitution” to “encourage and support local manufacturing” and exports. We thought there was already a vibrant “Buy Zimbabwe” movement linked to Zanu-PF which is making a huge impact in the country but for a spirited campaign by the MDC-T which wants its supporters to boycott local products to make the economy “squeal” and “scream”!
Dr Mujuru’s manifesto also talks about investing in the exploitation of coal bed methane, solar and wind energy, air, rail and road infrastructure, technical and vocational training and decent housing. Still one is hard put to find something new or original. Have they heard about Victoria Falls International Airport? Or Group Five and what has happened to the Plumtree-Bulawayo-Harare-Mutare highway? Why not just take a drive?
Have they read about the latest tender for the dualisation of the Beitbridge-Masvingo-Harare-Chirundu highway? For some reason, they probably haven’t heard of deals with China to increase power generation capacity at Kariba and Hwange! These should constitute the bedrock of any democracy.
Enter the ventriloquist
That is only part of a long list of Zanu-PF programmes being reproduced in the People First BUILD manifesto as a revelation for the less informed, including the fact that Zanu-PF is already “rationalising farm sizes in line with agro-economic regions or production capacity”. The only difference might be that, if they were to win an election, they would be unencumbered by sanctions as the Zanu-PF Government has been for the past 15 years, and for that, People First is trying mightily to con Zimbabwean voters and outbid the MDC-T by camouflaging its manifesto in the “founding principles of the liberation struggle”.
To that end, they are “national democrats, guided by the values of the liberation struggle, of self-determination, self-dignity, self-pride, expressed through the adoption of market-driven policies under a constitutional democracy, with the State acting as a facilitator and regulator to allow for a level playing field and provide equal opportunities for all”.
I must confess that it is the first time for me read about the founding principles of the liberation struggle of this country being linked to the objectives of “market-driven policies”. No wonder Tsvangirai’s party feels threatened. They have few war veterans on their side. Yet war veterans must be sensitive about how their liberation war ideals are being twisted.
It is this neoliberal posture by Mujuru which has created the positive frenzy and delirium among analysts and media houses who have always pushed an outward focused agenda. Anchoring that agenda are issues of foreign direct investment, obsession with the IMF, property rights, market forces, Diaspora vote and dual citizenship. And all these markers of civilisation must have the stamp of the former colonial power and its allies. Investments from China, Russia or Aliko Dangote are viewed with cynicism, if not suspicious hostility.
Dr Mujuru has gone a step further to show her pedigree, why she is the most deserving horse to bank on for the Presidency, promising to “enforce, promote, and respect property rights and address historical compulsory acquisition through fair and transparent compensation”.
Zanu-PF had offered to compensate white farmers only for developments on the farm, not land itself. What is proposed by People First is that Zimbabweans, who shed blood, sweat and tears for this land, would, in the interest of market forces and as a government priority, be taxed and their mineral resources exploited for purposes of paying white farmers “whose land” was acquired by Government to settle nearly 300 000 blacks! That is on top of all their earlier dispossession, their toil as farm labourers.
We must pay a price for winning the war which allowed us to reclaim our land! Why does a black man’s freedom always have to be purchased at such a steep price? We are a generous lot.
Two other issues before the bombshell. Under a People First administration, civil servants and the “security establishment shall be apolitical”. They will be exhorted to be professional. What is not clear is whether apolitical and professional are synonymous or interchangeable, for none of the terms in and of itself implies neutrality. Instead, what they leave open is that in the absence of a strong national youth training (ideological anchor) programme, your civil servants and security establishment are available for capture with little financial inducement.
Over the years since African nations have achieved political independence, Canada and France have used these “apolitical and professional” military officers to stage many coups against inconvenient leaders in West Africa, including Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana in 1966.
The same applies to misguided, unplanned privatisation of parastatals and State enterprises. On this, Dr Mujuru’s kite moots the idea of privatisation and the usual IMF-inspired limited role for Government in the economy. A caveat is in order here, and it comes by way of a well-meaning comment from one of my favourite Zimbabwe Independent columnists, Ritesh Anand. The article was in the issue of August 28, 2015 titled, “Lessons from Zambia: Zim can be wealthier”.
I quote: “The speed at which Zambia has proceeded with its privatisation process was attributed to the autonomy of the ZPA (Zambia Privatisation Agency), which had a 12-member private sector majority board, devoid of political influence.” Hear this gem: “The process was closely monitored by the international community, notably by key donors. Prior to privatisation, about 80 percent of economic activities in Zambia were controlled by the state. This has since been reduced to between 10 percent and 15 percent.”
This is the morale: foreign ownership and control are good, local involvement of the State is bad for the economy. And outsiders have no “political influence” on the economy. I hear you murmur, that there is nothing wrong so long as foreigners deliver. Perhaps, and the equivalent is; I don’t care with whom my wife sleeps so long as I get the children.
Exaggerated a bit, but that’s just a cautionary about Dr Mujuru’s PEACE or Presidential Economic Advisory Centre for Excellence. Whose economic values do your advisors carry around with them? Is their expertise free of the ideology transmitted through their education?
Finally, what People First didn’t want to copy from Zanu-PF it used as a bomb strike against the party. It states emphatically: “A wholesale review of the Indigenisation Act will be effected. We shall emphasise economic empowerment that attracts investment and promotes the broad-based socio-economic and infrastructure development objectives of BUILD.”
The implication is clear enough. Zimbabweans need only to be empowered with jobs; community share ownership trusts and employee empowerment programmes don’t attract investment. Even in the face of risks posed by falling commodity prices on the international markets, there is no indication in the BUILD manifesto that value-addition and beneficiation might be one way out. Instead, we have a young State whose elected Government is happy to watch with arms akimbo while “market forces” determine the fate of its people. So much for the values of the liberation struggle.
In the absence of new policy initiatives besides neoliberal policies to lure western sponsorship and a casual reference to principles of the liberation struggle to beguile unwary war veterans and members of the security establishment, analysts of every colour have rushed to hedge the party for possible electoral losses by invoking the bogey of political violence and electoral rigging. This is three years before the vote!
Yet what is closer to the truth is that the party could reap a protest vote in the mode of the euphoria which greeted the MDC in 1999 than policy offerings. The bigger risk to Zanu-PF are its internal fights more than policy deficiency. It addresses more fundamental and foundational issues than bourgeois conceptions of independence and freedom.
Online Reporter