Voters wait to cast their vote in the 31 July 2013 harmonised elections
Joram Nyathi
Group Political Editor
ON May 20 this year the Daily News led with a bold headline proclaiming: “We’ve already won: Tsvangirai”. This was in reference to the forthcoming harmonised elections. They lost. Prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai was inconsolable. He called the election results a sham.It was President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF who won the elections with a commanding margin. This was the same old Zanu-PF, yet since then the party has been walking with a limp, behaving much like it was a party of novices stunned by an unexpected triumph over a Goliath.
There is no doubt that Zanu-PF won on the basis of its policies regardless of how much the other political parties tried to discredit them.
Yet it has been vacillating and conveying conflicting signals to the public about its intentions -what has often been dubbed “policy inconsistency” by economic commentators. In fact Zanu-PF has since the July 31 electoral victory behaved as though to shame those who voted for its policies and appease those who opposed it for the same policies. Below are a few indicators.
IMF: The government has engaged the International Monetary Fund in the so-called Staff Monitored Programme. We are not clear what is being monitored. Given our experience with the IMF and its structural adjustment programmes, it is doubtful that anybody who was retrenched during the 1990s would vote for re-engagement. We doubt that the IMF’s sympathies would be divorced much from the goals of the
US’ sanctions regime and its aversion to anything Zanu-PF, moreso a contested Zanu-PF government.
While in general the private media have gone out of their way to try and convince everybody that there is no survival without the Bretton Woods institution’s blessing, it is almost universally acknowledged now that its anti-poor prescriptions have played havoc on people’s lives.
It is shocking that Zanu-PF should embrace the IMF as its best friend so soon after a major victory derived chiefly from rural voters! How does this align with the party’s pro-poor policies? It should be interesting to listen to the pragmatism of it, or just elementary rationalisation beyond our debt arrears.
Indigenisation: A key Zanu-PF policy linked to the land reform programme has been indigenisation and economic empowerment. Again since the elections, there have been conflicting signals. The policy needs to be clarified and its parameters set, that’s correct.
If there are exceptions to indigenisation according to certain sectors of the economy, for instance banking, let this be spelt out. Any appearance of conflict and indecisiveness as was witnessed in the contest for territory between former Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono and then Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment minister Saviour Kasukuwere simply gives hostage to fortune. You create a lot of uncertainty in the economy.
The point is that you don’t attract so-called foreign investors by being indecisive. State your policy categorically and stick to the law. If you have nothing to sell nobody will buy it even if you decree zero tariff. If you have a beautiful daughter like Zimbabwe does there will be many suitors so long as they know what you want.
Reserved sectors: Recently foreigners were given an ultimatum to get out of “reserved sectors” of the economy such as transport, retail, agriculture, barbershops, hairdressing etc by January next year. Here is a country which was saved from a potential military invasion by the spirit of African solidarity now kicking the same friends in the teeth!
Is errant Botswana and its western friends not enough enemy ideologically that Zanu-PF should be seeking to alienate more African countries? The same countries which have just endorsed its electoral victory to much ridicule and derision from those who would benefit more from continuous fratricidal strife in our country and the region! Is it amnesia or hubris? With such self-destructive policies who would want to bother being Zanu-PF’s public enemy?
You can reserve certain sectors for locals and even demarcate special economic zones for foreigners and the rich where foreign currency can be designated as the sole legitimate medium of exchange. But this has to be a clearly spelt out policy, not whimsical xenophobic populism masquerading as economic empowerment.
Zimbabwe dollar: There is enduring bogey of the Zimbabwe dollar. Apparently it has tacitly been acknowledged as the public enemy number one. It is resented more than the IMF and Esap which were the chief architects of currency devaluation. Not to mention our local manufacturers and traders who have no other strategy to achieve export competitiveness beside devaluation. When that has been done to the fullest extent they turn around and ditch the worthless currency.
I am ready to be educated on countries which have achieved universal prosperity without their own currency completely. I travel a lot around the country and fully appreciate the levels of poverty our people experience because they can’t lay their hands on the Obama. People have killed each other over a dollar.
At the national level the RBZ has been rendered redundant because there is no lender of last resort status for it and it can’t induce so-called “quantitative easing” despite the current “cash crunch” and distress calls in all sectors of the economy.
Yet with a little self-belief, a little ingenuity and tough penalties for corruption, the Zimbabwe dollar can be used along with the multi-currency regime.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the absence of the Zimbabwe dollar has in any significant way increased our foreign harvest from either direct foreign investment, bilateral trade agreements or exports. Instead we have become one of the biggest consumer countries in the region and the largest exporter of foreign currency to import junk.
Let’s hope that when Zanu-PF returns from its conference in Chinhoyi it will get down to some serious business befitting the mandate it has been given to run this country.
People feel short-changed by too much focus on party business. There are more stakeholders in Zimbabwe Inc than party supporters. A big victory seems to have induced in Zanu-PF a sense of lethargy, invincibility and a huge dose of arrogance and people are counting the stitches.