Zimbabwe’s missed chance

Nick Mangwana View from the Diaspora

The argument is that with import substitution industrialisation, Zimbabwe would have been in a better state of self-sufficiency and we would be celebrating the blessing of sanctions as we would have turned around a bad situation to our advantage.

THERE is no doubt that Zimbabwe is facing economic challenges of immeasurable magnitude.

There are many reasons for this state of economic malaise the country finds itself in such as, corruption, lack of political will by some politicians, poor planning or implementation of planned economic programmes, pathetic credit rate and top of it all economic sanctions.

The sanctions debate has raged on for a long time and as cynical as some have turned the fact will never change that.

But did the country do enough to mitigate itself against these sanctions?

Was enough creativity and long-term planning deployed to help absorb the impact? Undeclared sanctions against Zimbabwe started in September 1999, and the fact that we are still talking of the impact sanctions are still having in Zimbabwe 16 years after their first clandestine inception probably suggests that we could have approached the issue differently and with aggressive economic plans and programmes.

One of our responses to sanctions being illegally declared against Zimbabwe was to Look East to substitute lost friends with our old all-weather friends.

While the pivot towards the East was an obvious and predictable move considering the history between Zanu-PF and the East during the liberation struggle, it needed to have been combined with a big thrust and campaign on import substitution industrialisation. The same way everybody today knows about the Look East Policy is the same way people should have known of looking inside policy, which is all about import substitution.

Our sanctions reality seems disconnected from the perception of the population. Instead of having more Chinese goods, Zimbabwe should have had more “Made in Zimbabwe” goods. Our insatiable appetite for things that are foreign put paid to the success of this policy. If politicians across the political divide cannot come to terms with the need to buy vehicles from Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries what chance does the country have.

The Buy Zimbabwe campaign was a policy which was agreed on in 2012, it is dusted three years later, recycled to gain a few headlines and disappear in the horizon, only to reappear accompanied by more seminars. But nothing in terms of action is actually there to put one’s fingers on.

Russia is a country smarting from the same type of sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe. It did not waste any time before responding by substituting the import elements of its industries with innovative local content.

The import restriction list should have been much bigger but with a consumerist attitude and a competition to find out who has more imports from Italy, Dubai or other exotic places, proper import substitution will not see the light of day.

With domestic production focus, by now Zimbabwe should have achieved a big chunk of self-sufficiency. There is no better angle to the noble indigenisation policy than that. It’s ironic that a country under sanctions would continue to have such a big import bill. Sable Chemicals came in the late ‘60s as a direct effort to reduce imports of fertilisers for Rhodesia farmers as well as a sanctions buster. The same applies to the manufacturing of the Puma Military trucks as well as the Ethanol Blend which was used in cars.

There should have been well known big projects aimed on import substitution industrialisation.

Recently, the Air force of Zimbabwe announced their own form of import substitution of the parts that they could not access because of the same sanctions. This is something to be lauded. The only problem seems to be that there did not appear to be central planning and this was not rolled out as a big national project to cushion against the impact of sanctions to the country as a whole.

They say necessity is master of invention. We invented nothing despite the clear need and despite the fact that it was necessary to do so. Our people would have been in worthwhile jobs in our indigenous industries. The indigenisation policy could still be an equity holder policy as well as a local industry growth policy.

The Government of Zimbabwe is right in its efforts to focus on not exporting primary goods. But that value addition and beneficiation in mining and agriculture should also have a sanctions busting element to it. The current lack of manufacturing activity in Zimbabwean industry is not sustainable and will not only be solved by begging the foreigner to come and re-industrialise the country. It will also take a radical re-industrialisation effort from our own internal sources.

Granted, the astronomical fall of the Zimbabwean dollar eroded pensions and savings, leaving the State in a survival here-and-now mode and less on long-term preventative measures.

A state that has reached self-sufficiency and economic interdependence is said to have reached autarky. By now Zimbabwe should have reached a state of autarky or at least on the road to it.

This is a policy that saw to Germany’s massive industrialisation. Hitler was an evil man. But even from those we find very objectionable we have one or two things to learn. The same with Rhodesia. The Rhodesian system was vile and morally reprehensible, but we have a few things to learn from it. The production of the “Puma vehicle” was also a part of import substitution.

The argument is not that Zimbabwe by now should have reached a state of 100 percent autarky. No. That is utopian. But the argument is that with import substitution industrialisation, Zimbabwe would have been in a better state of self-sufficiency and we would be celebrating the blessing of sanctions as we would have turned around a bad situation to our advantage.

There is no question that Zimbabwe is experiencing surreptitious boycotts in every economic sense. Of course there is a big gap between the declared sanctions and the undeclared sanctions that involve arm-twisting, threats and blacklisting of companies that want to invest or do business with Zimbabwe by powerful Western countries. This is quite devastating as you can’t force anyone to invest in your own country.

Some play politics by blaming their unhelpful latitude to what they deem to be lack of clarity to the Indigenisation law or policy and in some cases both.

The Government of Zimbabwe can break down and explain distinguished Indigenisation policy till cows come home. Everyone would continue to pretend not to understand it. One thing that has to be accepted in national economics and politics, whenever someone is empowered, someone is disempowered.

Thus we have to accept is that our policies will have victims. In this case those that were exploiting us will fight their corner through deliberate misconstruction to make sure the policy fails and discourage anyone else out there who dares. That should have been anticipated and a better focus on autarky should have been charted.

Now they say hindsight is vision 20 /20 but it’s not too late to embrace the new approach. “Made in Zimbabwe” by now should have been everyone’s pride, not just a mundane slogan on some T-Shirt worn by a well-meaning Ghetto Youth.

It should be about a big time industrial product that has been made between this beautiful land that lies between Zambezi and Limpopo.

Right now there is less and less products that are fully made in Zimbabwe, indicating an obvious shrinking not only in industrial activity but also in creativity. The current consumer attitude that everything foreign is of better quality than locally manufactured items is wrong and smirks of lack of patriotism on all of us. In Russia there were legislators who also loved imports and were pushing Russia to lift its tit-for-tat sanctions against the West.

They were rightly labelled traitors by their colleagues in the Duma (Russian parliament). Now we abhor hate speech and sensationalisation, but if the shoe fits, then comrade Honourables, wear it.

A traitor is someone who betrays a principle. The word quisling is kind of a stretch but there was a temptation to apply it here. The problem is whilst the country’s industrial base was being eroded, the industrialist was busy being replaced by a dealer businessman.

Has the reader ever wondered why a country suffering from as liquidity crunch has banks that have cash machines that can dispense $5 000?

In the US, the average maximum one gets from a cash machine is around $500 a day. In the UK the average is around £300 account depending on the account, with some giving £500.

In Zimbabwe it is very easy to withdraw $3 000 or $5 000 from an automated teller machine. That clearly suggests a dealer economy.

Import substitution is never about here and now or the next election. It is a long-term perspective.

Some of the outcomes cannot have a five-year turnaround time. A nation with a long-term vision should have the patience to realise some of the gains of today’s policies in the next generation.

Zimbabwe’s economy was reliant of imports and even got worse with the imposition of debilitating sanctions.

The attitude that buying locally manufactured items is indicative of a lower social station is not only a self-loathing position, it is also a form of ill-informed snobbery.