Zimbabwe’s economy is on the
brink. A report by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries says capacity utilisation for the manufacturing sector has markedly
declined since the July 2013 elections. In 2012 it stood at 44.9% and is now
down to 39.6%. Another report by the National Social Security Authority
(NSSA) says between July 2011 and July 2013, 711 companies folded in Harare
alone, resulting in 10 000 job losses. But perhaps the grimmest sign that the
economy is off the rails was the failure by Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa
to make a budget statement as was expected after President Mugabe set up a new
government. Chinamasa told members of parliament at a workshop in the resort
town of Victoria Falls that the government was broke and that he would not be
presenting a budget to parliament. Zimbabwean citizens would have found the MPs’
lampooning of Chinamasa as the ‘minister of finance without the finance’ funny but
they did not. This is because this is a matter of serious national concern and
Zimbabweans have had enough of this life of penury.
Faced with this harsh economic
reality, one would have expected ZANU (PF) policy wonks that drafted the Zimbabwe
Agenda for Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) document to think outside
the box in crafting a blueprint that would chart a path towards creating a
conducive environment for recovery and sustainable growth. What many Zimbabweans
expected was a framework for industrial revival and job creation. Sadly Zim
Asset fails this simple test and will not get Zimbabwe’s economy out of the
rut.
The biggest problem is that Zim
Asset is predicated on self-serving propaganda that ZANU )PF) has been feeding Zimbabweans
ad nausea. What the drafters of the document seem to forget is that elections are over and Zimbabweans are
expecting food on the table and not excuses. The assertion that ‘Zimbabwe
experienced a deteriorating economic and social environment since 2000 caused
by illegal economic sanctions imposed by the Western countries…’ is a red
herring that must be rejected with the contempt it deserves. While such blatant
lies are tolerable in in a party campaign manifesto, it is unacceptable to have
them in a national policy document that is supposed to help extricate a country
from economic collapse. Serious Zimbabweans who are committed to making this
country work again will know that Zimbabwe began experiencing economic decline in
the second half of the 90s, the zenith of which was the so called “Black Friday’ of November 14, 1997, when in
one day, the Zimbabwean dollar lost more than 70% of it value. International
financial institutions had already raised the red flag on Zimbabwe, thanks to
Mugabe’s populist policies of awarding unbudgeted for gratuities to veterans of
the liberation struggle and participating in a costly war to prop up Laurent
Kabila in the Democratic republic of Congo.
Sanctions were only imposed after the violent elections of 2000 and
2002. It is therefore shameful for the drafters of ZIM ASSET to tell blatant
lies in a document that purports to be enunciating national public policy.
Let us for second go with the
ZANU (PF) lie that sanctions are at the center of the myriad challenges that confront
us today. One would have expected that Zim Asset would spell out a plan for countering
the sanctions or limiting their damage. Sadly there is no such plan except a
single sentence that makes reference to Zimbabwe pursuing ‘import substitution
industrialization’. For the record, import substitution industrialization (ISI)
means the country would reduce its import bill by producing products that it
would ordinarily import. So instead of spending billions on importing tractor
spares from China for instance, we would make our own, a herculean task given
the perilous state of our manufacturing capacity. The reason why the drafters
of Zim Asset do not go beyond that single sentence in their reference to import
substitution industrialization is that they know that Zimbabwe’s manufacturing
sector is dead and we are importing even paper clips and rubber bands from
other countries. Was it not George Charamba himself who was excoriating the CZI
in his abusive Nathaniel Manheru
column for failing to invest in new technologies in Zimbabwe’s manufacturing
sector?
Another
problem is that Zim Asset is not grounded in empiricism as its drafters glossed
over important key statistics. Take the growth projections for example. Zim
Asset predicts a very ambitious average growth trajectory of 7.3%, which is not backed by any explanation of how it
will be achieved. One wonders how a government that currently cannot pay its
bills will achieve 3.4% growth in 2013, 6.1% in 2014 and 9.9% by 2018. A table
with thumb sucked growth rates for various sectors of the economy is presented
but no one bothered to explain how those figures were derived.
Zim Asset’s proposals for the
agricultural sector are a sick joke. The same failed strategies that have
resulted in the country going from Africa’s bread basket to a basket case are
recycled. Instead of addressing the biggest problem confronting the
agricultural sector, which is that of land being rendered dead capital by the
absence of security, the authors of Zim
Asset regurgitate the same tired mantra of ‘government support to agriculture’.
This was tried under Gedoen Gono’s profligate farm mechanisation programmes and
it yielded nothing. Zimbabwean legendary
musician Thomas Mapfumo called it ‘kurima nzara’. What the agricultural
sector desperately needs is a framework that will restore its status a
business. A business requires capital to be viable and banks are only going to
provide capital where there is security of tenure. ZANU (PF)’s 99 year leases
have not done so.
The drafters of Zim Asset seem
unsure whether this is a national policy document or a party campaign
manifesto. Their inclusion of a “presidential inputs support scheme’ in a
national policy document is baffling. We know for a fact that in the run up to
the elections Mugabe used the same scheme to source money from his dodgy allies
to shore up his support. That the same scheme is now contained in a national
policy document is scandalous. If public resources are being allocated to
agriculture, why should they be part of a presidential program that benefits
only ZANU (PF) members and supporters? If resources for the scheme are
privately sourced why should they be included in a public policy document that
is supposed to benefit all citizens regardless of political affiliation?
More worrying is Zim Asset’s
deafening silence on the democratisastion and reform agenda. One would have
expected that this government would put in place measures for building a social
contract with the citizens but it seems ZANU (PF)’s hubris and triumphalism
have blinded it to the need for a governance framework that gives citizens a
voice.
Finally Zim Asset is shrouded in
ideological ambivalence. On the one hand the document espouses the idea of
using ‘its own local resources, which are in abundance and readily available
for full exploitation and utilization’, while on the other it proposes engaging
bilateral and multilateral funding partners for support. The same incongruity
is evident in the badly drafted indigenisation policy which has been interpreted
differently by ZANU (PF) officials. This ideological ambivalence has confused
investors and this has not been helped by other populist pronouncements,
including the banning of foreign investment in sectors that are said to be
reserved for locals only.
After reading Zim Asset one gets
the impression that those in charge of running this country are clueless about
what is wrong with it and what needs to be done to get it working again. The drafters
of Zim Asset skirted the real problems and as a result the solutions they
prescribe are anachronistic. This is hardly surprising given the recycling of
the same old and tired brains we witnessed when the President announced his
cabinet four months ago. Until the ZANU (PF) government demonstrates a commitment
to democratic reform by fully implementing the new constitution, reforming
state institutions and putting in place measures for fair and equal political
participation, it will remain a pariah and will not attract international
support and investment, which are critical for the country’s recovery.
