admin
Joram Nyathi
THE history of national development in every era of human civilisation shows that, particularly in the early stages but then all the way, it is only the government which can plan and craft policies with a specific focus on the common good. Individuals are motivated by either immediate requirements for survival or pure self-interest.
Those individuals who by a combination of cunning, exploitation of fellowmen, greed and entrepreneurship manage to accumulate enough wealth to use to exert their influence on others, will at some stage be able to influence government policy in their favour, forcing the state to abandon its more holistic developmental purpose beyond guaranteeing national security.
Those individuals, put crudely, constitute your capitalist class. Unfortunately for humanity, their tentacles and influence now extends way beyond their national borders and they can even bring down foreign governments which resist their policy writs. The lucky ones get tamed by a little rapping on the knuckles through sanctions.
Zimbabwe is at the stage of sanctions, but not yet tamed and sanctions will not be “lifted” until the current government makes a diametric policy change for the pleasure of the foreign capitalist class and its local comprador.
An immutable law of capitalists is that once offended they don’t forget and they don’t forgive, the late Libyan leader Gaddafi bears more than enough testimony. More importantly, they are persistent in stalking their prey: Zimbabwe be wary. The vulture is a patient bird. Zanu- PF should never dream of forgiveness for the eternally offending land reform and economic empowerment programmes, twin evils by an insolent African which seek to foment a continent-wide rebellion against duly-deserved economic slavery. Deserved because we are a lesser people, as Botha disclosed as late as 1987. Let’s get to the point.
Recently, there has been a refrain by the local media and the capitalist comprador against the Zim-Asset economic recovery blueprint. We have been told over again that it lacks clarity and consistency. Where the government has tried to clarify these issues, for instance President Mugabe’s recent assurances that there would be no wholesale nationalisation of foreign companies and that the government won’t impose a standard 51/49 percent on institutions like banks or telecoms where there is nothing intrinsically natural or Zimbabwean, this has allegedly elicited more confusion.
Professor Jonathan Moyo explained last week that under the Production Sharing Model of indigenisation, contracting parties would work out the percentages while foreign investors would be allowed to recoup their investment and a fair return on investment. To this end, he said, the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act would be reviewed to align it to the new implementation modalities.
There are cries for more clarification and policy consistency if you want foreign investment, the refrain persists. Until, if one has closely followed Zimbabwe’s recent struggle against neo-liberal impositions, they realise that policy consistency and clarity are just a code, a euphemism that the master doesn’t approve of your policies. There is absolutely no guarantee, and we have no reason to expect one, that any further clarification will yield a deluge of new investment.
So, should we decide to sup with the devil, don’t forget the long spoon, and always beware of Greeks bearing gifts to humour us to lower our guard. More on this later.
Some recent experiences reveal a similar code, a similar narrative. During the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) period from about 1991, the buzzwords were currency devaluation and retrenchment. Without these two, the programme would not achieve the desired outcome. There would be no foreign direct investment. It was a period of austerity measures and belt-tightening. Despite Morgan Tsvangirai’s best efforts to resist ESAP as ZCTU secretary-general, he lost, because “captains of industry” insisted that ESAP was our only way to Canaan. Thousands of workers were retrenched. The dollar was systematically devalued, “to improve export competitiveness”.
By the time ESAP was abandoned mid-1990s, Zimbabwe’s economy was terminally crippled, the textile sector dead from unfair competition and thousands of former workers out of employment. Still the refrain about currency devaluation continued until it gave way to the bearer cheque. Without foreigners we were nothing.
Which reminds me of remarks by Malawian President Peter Mutharika to his countrymen at his inauguration last week. He said it was time to move on as one nation and rebuild the country, but observed: “Our only problem is the way we think. The only barrier to our national achievement is our belief in others at our (own) expense.”
He would have been amused to know that the disease has reached pandemic levels in Zimbabwe. Every policy decision must first be endorsed by the international community through the mediation of either the political opposition or non-governmental organisations or captains of industry, an industry which has committed suicide by substituting production of local goods with gluttonous consumption of imports.
The land reform programme had its own catchphrases of disapproval: security of tenure, human rights violations and property rights. Once you heard that, it summed up everything wrong about this wayward country: there was no rule of law and it was therefore not a safe destination for investment. It didn’t matter that the law then supported a racially-discriminatory land ownership pattern. The impression given was that property of every type, including residential accommodation, was under threat.
This is simply a long way of saying we don’t want your policies. And nothing gains legitimacy faster than a foreign voice echoed by your own people, intellectual or not.
Today, black economic empowerment policies as encapsulated in Zim-Asset are similarly under attack. This time it is lack of clarity and consistency of application which are keeping away investors.
Yet the truth is that we have industry and the so-called investors pleading the cause of ESAP by any other name and by the time the policy is clear and consistent, there would be no black economic empowerment left to talk about.
Part of the message is not even so subtle. The government has been told to review its labour laws. That leaves the worker exposed in terms of security of tenure, powerless to negotiate better conditions of service. In our case in particular, with so many people already part of the lumpen proletariat, employers are free to offer slave wages to maximise profit. They must be allowed to pay the lowest taxes, levies and wages and bank their profit offshore. There should be the barest minimum in terms of social protection for the worker, and government cannot intervene without being accused of causing distortions in an otherwise flawless, colossal capitalist enterprise.
The vagaries of a free market economy are let loose and government is reduced to an impotent bystander.
Similarly, government itself is being told by the IMF to compete with private sector companies which are slashing their workforce everyday because the wage bill is unsustainable.
It is also in this light that we should view the latest interest by the EU to “normalise” relations with Zimbabwe. There must be policy clarity and consistency.
They are keen to cut their losses. This is time to test the waters as they map out post-Mugabe scenarios.
Talking to the Zanu-PF government is a way to lay a platform for a soft-landing after years in self-isolation while the Chinese, Brazilians, Indians and Russians made money. Beware of the Trojan horse they will leave by the gate of Troy.
Joram Nyathi is the Zimbabwe Newspapers Group’s Political Editor. E-mail him: [email protected]
Online Reporter