admineconomic rights, including their livelihoods, health care and shelter. It all started with “99 percent” of socio-economically deprived Americans rallying under the charge of “Occupy Wall Street” against a minority “one percent” on Wall Street that has monopolised the American economy to their sole privilege.
This one percent is estimated to own 40 percent of American national wealth, 25 percent of the national income. From Wall Street the occupation has reached the London Stock Exchange, demanding the same socio-economic justice. For London the occupation comes just a few months after the violent protests by British youths against socio-economic inequality and deprivation. The occupation of Wall Street and the London Stock Exchange has exposed the inequalities within western economies. A small minority owns and controls the economy.
The has majority, however, been subjected to socio-economic deprivation, having been taught to expect only jobs and to labour, yet can no longer be provided such jobs by economies caused into recession by the 1 percent.
Zimbabwe has been presented with relevant and critical lessons arising from the occupation of Wall Street and the London Stock Exchange by economically deprived American and British citizens. Should we care to learn we might well discover why indigenisation must not fail?
Zimbabwe is pursuing a unique socio-economic revolution where the Government of Zimbabwe seeks to reverse the alienation of Zimbabweans from their own economy by breaking down the monopoly over our economy and natural resources by foreign companies/investors. Ultimately foreign investors will be allowed to retain 49 percent of our economy while 51 percent must be attained by indigenous Zimbabweans.
The first important lesson is that the foreign investors from whom indigenisation takes back control and ownership of our economy and natural resources are among the very same corporations on Wall Street and the London Stock Exchange who are now faced with occupation by their own fellow citizens whom they have caused to be socio-economically deprived.
We must now be asking ourselves: “If American and British citizens are protesting against their economies benefiting only a few of their fellow citizens who own corporations and run the economy, why then should we in Zimbabwe be told to remain content with our own economy continuing to provide greater benefit to foreign investors”.
The calls for occupation of unevenly distributed economies have echoed in nearby South Africa, a country whose economy is still defined by apartheid’s dispossession of and discrimination against blacks.
Whether in New York, London or Cape Town the protesting voices echo the same demands against their monopolised national economies.
They have been heard protesting against “economic inequalities”, “corporate greed” and “increasing social and economic injustice”, while demanding that there be “an equal share in national wealth” and “economic equality”. American and British citizens have become so economically alienated, to the extent that those who have been taught to expect only jobs from the economy have found justification in occupying the symbols of economic wealth, control and ownership.
If it has dawned on American and British citizens that their corporations, the same that come to us as foreign investors, can no longer guarantee them jobs, then why in God’s name should we expect that investments from these same corporations will guarantee sustainable jobs in Zimbabwe.
America’s own President Obama has acknowledged these occupations as an expression of frustrated Americans deprived of their socio-economic needs by the “immoral or inappropriate or reckless” conduct of corporations and their owners who have refused to account for their behaviour which put the world’s biggest economy into recession.
Yet even our own would tell us, after consultations in America, that our indigenisation programme which seeks to guarantee for Zimbabweans the same “economic equality” and “equal share of the national wealth” being demanded by western citizens, is ruining the country’s image. One would have thought it is the image of America and England that is being ruined by their own citizens protesting against poverty and socio-economic deprivation.
The image of American law enforcement officers brutalising, beating and arresting peaceful demonstrators is excused and not seen as an unacceptable violation of civil and political rights to expression and assembly. Rather, we are told we must be the ones to be concerned about our image because our President and minister responsible for indigenisation have remained resolved in pursuing the implementation of laws that guarantee us economic equality.
One would have thought that foreign investors now under siege at home would be scrambling for Zimbabwe where as much as a 49 percent share in Zimbabwe’s economy is guaranteed them by the law and accepted by a contented indigenous population retaining 51 percent. Is 49 percent little, really! These same investors are facing occupation back home because they own and control 40 percent of America’s national wealth.
Yet in Zimbabwe, in a land foreign to them, they are being offered an additional 9 percent amounting to 49 percent in a country endowed with vast natural resources. And still they say they are being scared off from investing in Zimbabwe, no wonder their own citizens are rising up against their greed and immorality.
Because we have turned the “foreign investor” into the proverbial sacred cow we can no longer believe and accept that our economy may just be better off if we have greater ownership and control over it.
As majority shareholders in our own economy we can then partner with investors, retaining control over the wealth to be derived from our resources and reinvesting in our own country to create jobs and sustain socio-economic rights. Foreign investors, much as they remain important partners, cannot go unchecked and be allowed to control our economy, more-so now that they have failed their own people’s socio-economic aspirations. How can we rely on them to create sustainable jobs in a country foreign to them, when in their own country they stand accused by their president of “immoral . . . inappropriate . . . reckless” conduct.
If charity does indeed begin at home, then we must be weary of leaving our economic aspirations in the hands of foreign investors, remembering how far we reside from their homes. So far that they will simply pack and leave should we one day sound the occupation of economic inequalities.
Two of the main political parties in Zimbabwe’s Inclusive Government have made clear their economic policies, which policies they will quite certainly present to the people of Zimbabwe come election time. Zanu-PF has remained steadfast in championing indigenisation as the measure to ensure that Zimbabweans cease to be labourers in their own economy and become owners of it.
Zanu-PF has thus chosen to fulfil Article 21 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, which article requires that member states must “eliminate all forms of foreign economic exploitation particularly that practiced by international monopolies”. We need to accept the reality that indigenisation is a Zanu-PF policy; manifested into law and implemented by the Government within which Zanu-PF sits.
Online Reporter