Of voyeurs and their misplaced priorities

Joram Nyathi Group Political Editor

Zim-Asset bids us beneficiate, we are not doing so, preferring instead low, quick returns on a finite resource. You can’t blame that on our foes!

VOYEURISM: it is described as a perversion in which a person receives sexual gratification from seeing the genitalia of others or witnessing others’ sexual behaviour. I doubt that this could become a national sickness. But then, Zimbabwe being what it is, one can’t put this beyond possibility.

By implication, some publications appear to suggest such a perversion has swamped the national mind where voyeurism can take precedence in the national psyche over the seeding of hope, over bread and butter issues, over politics, over survival, over economic recovery.
For a start, let’s go back to the source.

Politicians have a habit of exaggerating their abilities, the propensity to over-promise. This disease hits a peak towards elections.
I can’t recall how many times the MDC told us about its Western friends with deep pockets who were ready to bring in truckloads of foreign currency once the party got into power. When it failed to do so in 2008 and formed a coalition Government with Zanu-PF, that became an alibi for why the money wasn’t coming in a deluge. It was all because of toxic Zanu-PF policies such as the land reform, indigenisation and black economic empowerment programme.

Fast track to 2013, Zanu-PF, in its wisdom, promised in its election manifesto to create 2,2 million jobs between 2013 and 2018 when its term ends and another election is due.

Even without defining the types of jobs envisaged, that figure will remain its nemesis. The party underestimated the spitefulness of its rivals, never mind that even in large economies 2,2 million new jobs in five years is a headache. Technological advances make it more profitable to shed up to 10 jobs for every one created. Creating jobs is not the same thing as importing cellphone handsets.

What has happened since elections in July last year is that the MDC has been trying hard to mask the trauma of its own implosion by whipping up emotions among youths by harking to the 2,2 million jobs promised by Zanu-PF. It has made it its business to catalogue company closures, trumpeting such figures with gusto, savouring them as a trumpcard to carry it to power in 2018.

China, enter Russia
Lately, MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has cranked up his rhetoric, inciting youths to stage demonstrations demanding jobs from Zanu-PF. That’s what he did on Saturday at Mucheke Stadium in Masvingo, where supporters gathered to commemorate the party’s 15th anniversary. He accused Zimbabweans of being too docile in the face of Zanu-PF’s failure to deliver on electoral promises.

“I crave to see workers coming to an all people’s demo, demanding a living wage, employers coming to the streets protesting against company closures, churches, students and young people demanding jobs,” he lamented.

For a party leader, shouldn’t he be telling people about available opportunities in their locality, getting them to pool resources for development and employment creation rather than fomenting lawlessness? How do demonstrations create jobs?

But there is logic beyond merely seeking attention. The other dimension is both cynical and sinister.
In the past two weeks President Mugabe has signed investment deals with China and Russia whose combined value is more than US$6 billion. They involve investment in diverse sectors of the economy from energy, education, tourism, rail, to dualisation of main trunk roads, all seen as vital enablers for commerce and investors.

Investment in the Gwayi thermal power plant in Matabeleland North starts at US$2 billion. Kariba South power station which President Mugabe launched last week will cost US$532 million, with the Export and Import Bank of China putting in US$319 million. This week President Mugabe signed a number of agreements, which involved commissioning a US$3 billion platinum project in Darwendale, estimated to be one of the largest joint ventures since independence with a capacity to produce a million ounces a year.

Those projects are hardly in their gestation stage, but they don’t paint a picture of a Government “doing nothing”.
What a better way to sabotage these Zanu-PF efforts than to call for demonstrations to raise the country’s political risk! That has always been the MDC’s default mode, that investors are not coming to Zimbabwe because of political risk engendered by a crisis of legitimacy.

But the MDC-T is also killing two birds with one stone. Demonstrations have immediate consequences, especially where there is a threat to life and property. Police are bound to come in hard. The European Union would then be told to rethink its plans to lift sanctions on November 1 this year. Why should it reward thuggery against “peaceful demonstrators” guaranteed in the Constitution?

There is no rule of law.
How a politician who hopes to one day rule this country can be so negative about its recovery efforts is hard to fathom. But that is Zimbabwean politics for you, the desperate quest for power.

Antwerp auction
Value addition and beneficiation of products before export has become a major talking point in Zimbabwe. The issue was sold and found keen buyers at the 34th Sadc Summit held in Victoria Falls in August. Its key selling point is industralisation, job creation and a higher return on export of finished products.

But that is not what Zimbabwe is doing. The seizure of US$45 million in diamonds revenue by a South African firm in Belgium last week speaks volumes.
First, Zimbabwe is selling raw diamonds for a pathetic return.

Second, only God knows why there is so much lethargy in building facilities to polish, cut and process diamonds in the country.
Third, is there a plausible pretext why Zimbabwe can only auction its diamonds in foreign jurisdictions, whether its Dubai or Antwerp?

Antwerp is the centre of the global diamond trade. But it is in Belgium, home of the European Union which has maintained sanctions on Zimbabwe for almost 12 years. That’s where we go to auction our rough diamonds.

Following the seizure of US$45 million by Amari Platinum Holdings, the Daily News reported on how Mbada Diamonds chairman Robert Mhlanga had warned Zimbabwe of such a possibility. He told a Parliamentary Committee on Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment in March of his reservations about selling our diamonds in Antwerp because of sanctions.

“We have actually reeled under sanctions thanks to Brussels, and for us now because they have claimed to have lifted sanctions and we run to them. Personally I have my reservations . . . I don’t believe in appeasing a foe,” he said.

He has been vindicated.
He told the committee that the country had the capacity to hold the auction locally. “There is a multiplicity of benefits when you invite people to do tenders in your country. You bolster your tourism industry.” That, too, fell on deaf ears.

The case for beneficiation is even more compelling. There were reports that the country could be losing as much as US$17 billion annually by selling unprocessed diamonds. That does not include billions lost through smuggling. Meanwhile, Government gets the flak for failure to account fully for diamond revenues, thus inadvertently lending credence to apocryphal claims of complicity in the alleged looting of diamonds. You can’t legislate against speculation.

Zim-Asset bids us beneficiate, we are not doing so, preferring instead low, quick returns on a finite resource. You can’t blame that on our foes!

Platinum vs the voyeur
Government says the country’s unemployment rate is at 11 percent. The opposition and business love estimates of between 80 and 95 percent because self-employed people in the informal sector are unemployed. It’s contested territory given the underemployed, those working outside areas of training just to make a living.

There is no denying that the economy is under serious stress and unemployment is high. Under such an environment, one would expect the announcement of an investment deal between Chinese and Zimbabwean firms to construct a US$4 billion power plant in Gwayi to be the story of the day.

The same day in Darwendale, Government signs deals with Russian firms for a US$3 billion platinum plant, reputedly the single largest such investment in the country since independence and one of the biggest in the world.

The total investment, the Minister of Mines explains, when the platinum project is completed, including setting up a refinery, will be US$4,8 billion, creating 8 000 jobs. Aren’t we told everyday that what Zimbabwe needs for its economic recovery is direct foreign investment? Then when it comes we start asking about its ideological ancestry!

On such a day, on Wednesday, the Daily News and NewsDay confirmed that great minds think alike. They both offered their front pages as platforms for the nation to follow with voyeuristic interest a story in which a man who had accused Pastor Walter Magaya of having an adulterous affair with his wife had withdrawn the court action. Word for word, both told us; “Magaya accuser chickens out”. If this is what excites the Zimbabwean mind more than investment and economic recovery, then we have our priorities upside down.