So much for protection

Clemence Machadu Insight
At “Ximex” it’s carnival everyday as public alcohol consumption appears to be the order of the day. No wonder why even drugs are also now being sold in broad daylight (not to imply that they should be sold manheru), and becoming easily accessible to our gullible youth.

Howdy folks!

Have you noticed how Harare wears a new look when night falls?

As shops close doors to end business of the day, informal traders dress Harare for another party, and it will be a hive of activity until midnight.

Municipal sweepers who clean up the after-party mounds of garbage from the central business district can recount what they have to put up with daily.

I am sure they dread going to work every single morning.

Folks, there is an economic enclave that thrives in the streets at night — roads will be virtually blocked and turned into mega open supermarkets in which one can shop just about anything of choice.

It’s no holds barred!

You can hardly pick your way in the melee as traders will be relentlessly jostling for customers.

A quick scan of this enclave will convince you beyond any shadow of doubt that the powers-that-be have reversed Statutory Instrument 64 of 2016 as well as other legal instruments that have been installed to protect local industries from the fierce competition posed by foreign products.

Getting down to brass tacks, the fundamental idea behind that protection was really to ensure local companies’ eggs are incubated without distraction so that they can hatch into birds that can mount wings and fly into the sky.

Regai dzive shiri, mazai haasebwi muto, old folks have said.

Alas, the unsaid are tampering with the incubator, pulling the plug on this important device, leaving the eggs without the much-needed warmth.

Prospects of hatching are diminished.

Surprisingly, all this madness is unfolding right under the nose of the policy-maker.

What is it that they are smelling when they sniff around? Coffee?

Or they don’t walk the same roads we walk everyday, thereby making them out of touch with reality and not the best persons to represent us.

Folks, the reality on the ground beggars belief.

It calls for urgent interrogation that leaves no stone unturned.

Why are restricted products proliferating on our streets to be Nicodemously sold at prices that are way cheaper than local substitutes?

Who is granting the import permits?

What are the justifications? Who is monitoring the country’s ports of entry?

Has smuggling become Government policy?

Zviri kumbonatsofamba sei?

Here is an illegal trader selling cheap imported products on the streets, products under import management for that matter — and we seem to be just okay with it.

The feint voices of policy-makers in condemning the undermining of policies they have put in place makes them complicit.

They have been okay with many things anyway, and this is probably one of those things they can stomach.

Is that the spirit?

Piracy yakauya, and look at how pirated music discs have beset our streets like the second plague in Pharaoh’s palace.

Also look at how disabled people are being abused to sell them under the misguided impression that they are above the law.

Have we become this inactive when it comes to enforcing the law? And where will that lead us?

At “Ximex” it’s carnival everyday as public alcohol consumption appears to be the order of the day.

No wonder why even drugs are also now being sold in broad daylight (not to imply that they should be sold manheru), and becoming easily accessible to our gullible youth.

Now, they have addictions to religiously obey.

What is not fair is that these illegal street vendors actually pay no rent at all, pay no water bill, no electricity bill, no permit subscription and certainly no tax at all.

They are just free riders.

Yet, they are thriving and making large margins that they keep all to themselves.

Is this the new normal we are talking about?

Why is Government giving all these de facto incentives to those who are promoting de-industrialisation and failure of its policies?

Government should not be seen as promoting this lawlessness which stinks to high Heaven.

It should be seen to be taking action to restore that spark that defined Harare as the Sunshine City.

And, for interest’s sake, where do these multitudes of street traders go when nature calls?

We certainly cannot ignore sanitation issues when people gather in such huge volumes at night.

The city fathers and mothers would have already shut the doors to their stinking public toilets ka by the time the traders start capturing CBD roads and turning them into market stalls.

Is it any coincidence that we now find our city sidewalks and mikoto defecated on daily?

Tahwa nekungofamba tichipfira mudhorobha umu; give us a break!

This kind of barbarism where we reduce Harare into a pigsty or Sodom and Gomorrah should not be tolerated at all.

Not this kind of hustle, please.

You see, the continued presence of products that have been restricted from importation on our streets shows that we are lying to ourselves, if not shooting ourselves in the foot.

We cannot expect production capacities of local firms to grow when demand has not shifted to their products’ favour.

Consumers still have the ability to buy cheaper imports and they are simply exercising rationality given their constrained incomes.

No wonder why the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, which was quite bullish about industrial capacity utilisation breaching levels as high as 65 percent, have had to revise the projection downwards.

The manufacturing sector’s growth rate is projected to recede to 0,1 percent this year compared to 0,3 percent in the prior year. So much for protection!

Even the growth in capacity utilisation of sectors that are protected should not give us comfort.

We should worry more about what we are doing to ensure companies can sustain demand for their products when the floodgates of protection are lifted.

Otherwise, if we are not competitive by then, demand will simply shift to cheaper imports, leaving local firms bereft.

We are already getting a foretaste of that through the impact of the smuggling of products under import management into the country.

Later folks!