Western emissaries: Sowing fear to stop economic emancipation

of worms said to have mysteriously found their way onto our plate and where now eating away at our share of a favorite family dish.
Overcome with fear of worms we were made to believe had suddenly manifested, though strangely invisible to our eyes, we parted with the plate we had aggressively defended only a few seconds ago.
And so we surrendered our prize, placed the whole plate into the waiting hands of a fear-peddling sibling whose intentions we naively thought were to rescue our besieged food from invading phantom worms, themselves his creation. Believing his actions benevolent we watched as he aggressively ate away at the “contaminated” food, claiming to extract the hideous trespassers.
When the fraud dawned upon our little minds it was too late for screaming tantrums to remedy a now empty plate and stomach. We were had, manipulated by the fear imposed on us.
Fear does that, makes us surrender what we value most, even blessings God bestows upon us. This same fear sought to be scattered in the minds of indigenous Zimbabweans during an interview of the British Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Deborah Bronnert; published in the Dailynews of May 12 2012.
Ambassador Bronnert was asked what her government thought of indigenisation. With an audience of indigenous Zimbabweans about to sit at an indigenisation table richly laid with natural resources and the promise of abundant socio-economic harvest, her response amounted to shouting ‘‘worms in the dish’’.
The good Ambassador warned that indigenisation would “act as a deterrent to much-needed foreign investment and have a detrimental impact on Zimbabwe’s economy.” She reminded us that of some US$10 billion Sadc attracted in foreign direct investment in 2010, Zimbabwe only got US$100 million.
The fear that has been planted in the midst of our indigenisation objectives is fear from the thought of fleeing foreign investors and a crippled economy? Already, many have been scared into tossing away the indigenisation plate and to scurry from the economic empowerment table.
Ambassador Bronnert reminds us that there are still 100 British companies in Zimbabwe. They survive in the shadows of a sanctioned economy and looming indigenisation obligations. It is they that will benefit most from the fear their Ambassador provokes, picking from an indigenisation plate which petrified natives discard. She knows that, the loyal Briton that she is.
With the fear of a collapsed economy planted in our minds and being made to doubt our own economic capabilities British investors would anticipate that we look back upon them for salvation, giving them back title over our economic being.
Before we are made to act in fearful haste, may we allow frightened minds to find composure? If indeed our indigenisation programme will keep foreign investors at bay and cause our economy to collapse why are 100 British companies still roaming Zimbabwe’s well endowed lands when all they can have is 49 percent of its wealth.
The British Ambassador correctly states their sole discretion “to make a commercial decision on whether to invest now in Zimbabwe”. Does it mean dear Ambassador that their staying means such discretion has long calculated good returns from the 49 percent we will let them keep?
Is that why they stay, despite warnings of an indigenisation-crazed host? Have they calculated that 49 percent, of diamonds, platinum, gold, etc, will still be enough to reap bountiful harvest for their Queen, the loyal worker ants they have proved to be?
They know the Queen now has little to offer her people on “the Island”, and that her subjects have shown a knack to burn the crown and demand abdication when socio-economic want and hunger bites.
So 100 companies brave indigenisation winds, ready to forego the 100 percent monopoly that was itself a vulgar luxury in the face of indigenous deprivation and poverty.
They go nowhere and more will come, l bet the 1st indigenous dollar I am expectant to soon acquire. Let us sit back down at the indigenisation table comrades, there are no worms upon our plates, but only the rich sustenance we do not mind sharing with respectful foreign guests in need.
They know it, that in the long term it will be better to do business with indigenous people content with the share they allow and guarantee “wauyi”. Long term business sense would prefer a now predictable and stabilised Zimbabwean economy than to venture into a hungry Africa with a nagging appetite for new indigenisation crusade.
By the way, what value is the US$9,9 billion, in foreign investment, Ambassador Bronnert flaunts as having been received by the rest of Sadc, less Zimbabwe? Our neighbours are said to have got US$1 billion each, we a measly US$100 million.
How much revenue from the billion-dollar investments is actually falling into the begging bowls of the majority poverty stricken black population in those countries? It cannot be about flowery statistics, but real socio-economic impacts. Look at the thousands of black South Africans that have made demonstrations against what they call present day economic apartheid their modus operandi despite being citizens of Africa’s richest economy, where foreign investors prefer to flock.
Meanwhile such demonstrations, sure to escalate and unnerve investors, are becoming less likely to ever occur among Zimbabwe’s indigenous people who have had yet another community share ownership trust lunched, guaranteeing the Gwanda community at least US$5 million to be used toward socio-economic development.
I wonder how much longer South Africa’s economically deprived majority will continue to misdirect their anger against fellow black Africans while they despise and envy white wealth acquired on the back of apartheid. Then, good Ambassador, shall we see which indigenous people are more welcoming to foreign investment.
Again in South Africa, socio-economically starved mine workers are crippling the platinum/mining economy with industrial action against the world’s second largest platinum producer, Impala Platinum. In their poverty they rupture the womb of their motherland to give its wealth to foreigners.
Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, mine workers being guaranteed a share in mining companies through employee share ownership schemes are encouraged to work harder and share in a greater dividend to be reaped from their sweat. Which economy will suffer in the long term dear Ambassador? The indigenised one; really?
Back to this meagre US$100 million in foreign investment Zimbabwe is said to have received in 2010, do any revenues that may have trickled into our national coffers surpass the US$600 million Finance Minister Biti gleefully expects, now demands, from our diamond trade in which foreign investors are confined to 49 percent shareholding.
In this same year of 2010 that foreign investors threw US$100 million like a dirty bone at our feet, did we not have indigenised Mbada Diamonds and Marange Resources contributing US$174 million to the national coffers from total diamond sales of US$314 million. Meanwhile, foreign owned Zimplats and Mimosa whose sales were twice as much, at US$700 million, contributed only US$105 million.
The point to be made dear Ambassador is that the monopolising capital of foreign investors does not guarantee economic returns that translate to socio-economic well-being for the majority of Africa’s historically deprived black people.
Zimbabwe has learnt the hard way, has in fact been taught by your country’s sanctions, that foreign investment can never be relied upon and will be manipulated by Western economic interests. We learnt that we must be owners of our own economy and its resources to reap bountifully and avoid the collapse of our economy.
Zimbabwe’s economy will not die. Indigenisation is merely the catalyst that would have it sprout and give new socio-economic life to indigenous Zimbabweans. The image of decay they now seek to use to frighten and debilitate us is but an inevitable Houdini which will give way to the birth of new socio-economic life and being.
Remember then, that indigenisation does not cause death to Zimbabwe’s economic life, but merely strips away and decays the foreign shells that besieged it, preparing indigenous Zimbabweans for a new prosperity that they can call their own.
There is another attempt at inculcating fear in Ambassador Bronnert’s interview. It is the EU-Zimbabwe re-engagement talks where the matter of illegal sanctions is central.
The questions is shall our emissaries enter the European Union board rooms fearing the threat of sanctions being maintained, a threat which we can bet shall be used as leverage to resuscitate European economic interests in Zimbabwe and secure such interest against rising Chinese competition. So when America’s Secretary of State, Johnnie Carson says that they will continue to impose sanctions until they “ . . . believe that substantial and irreversible progress has been made” by our inclusive Government, it is all rubbish.
They care less about our governance, and more about the impact “who governs us” will have on their economic interests. Their priority is to rid of and change the indigenisation championing regime that bears their Western economies such high unaffordable cost.
Thus, if President Mugabe were to steer Zanu-PF and Minister Kasukuwere away from an indigenisation path the West will be the first to bring tidings of a miraculous end to sanctions. But really, what more do we have to fear of sanctions whose pain we have suffered a decade long, yet we endured and find ourselves alive and well. Better still, our lives are filled with a new hope inspired by the reclaiming of our natural resources and economy.
Because of these very sanctions have we not now learnt that a people whose economy is not theirs to own and control will find themselves stripped naked, laid bare by the foreign hands that monopolise and dictate to such alienated economy. And now it is indigenisation that will restore and guarantee what sanctions stripped off us, our human dignity and socio-economic prosperity.
So never mind their fear-peddling, it is a desperate attempt by bullies facing hunger to deprive of what is our own socio-economic sustenance. We simply need not give in to such threats and fear.