Two-faced Zanu PF: five years ago it was Murambatsvina; today its ‘economic empowerment’
I think what ruffles my feathers more than anything about Zanu PF’s indigenisation policy is the duplicity shrouding the sanctimonious speech around it. It also bugs me that the few people supporting it fail to see the wood for the trees, and that they foolishly turn a blind eye to Zimbabwean history as recent as five years ago.
For a start, there’s a world of difference between an empowerment policy that is based on the notion that one group of people ‘has too much and should be punished for it‘, and one that argues ‘I want the entire country to have the ability to be equally as successful as that group of people‘.
Second, there is an absurd contradiction in any policy that claims to be economically ‘empowering’ when its means of enforcement requires the calculated disempowerment of a group of people.
But these contradictions are small details when viewed alongside Zanu PF’s hypocrisy.
You can divide the Zimbabwean economy of the last ten years into roughly three broad categories:
Group 1: The Zanu PF elite, profiteering out of shady business deals and preferential treatment for Zanu PF; for example, access to fuel and preferential exchange rates (all lucratively sold on the black—market).
Group 2: The formal business community, fighting to survive in the context of hyperinflation, currency shortages, corruption, and a skills deficit and, most impressively, doing so amidst Zanu PF meddling with issues like price-controls, wages, and pilfering of money held in foreign currency accounts.
Group 3: The ‘wheeler-dealer’ informal market: these being the people who pushed their imaginations to the furthest boundaries, spotted opportunities when they arose and adapted speedily to changing conditions, all the while ducking and diving to avoid police crackdowns.
It is Group 3 that has always given me the most hope for our country’s future: their imagination, their ability to adapt to changing conditions, and a willingness to take risks seeming to me to be a fantastic basis for future training and entrepreneurship.
Group 2 is undoubtedly the most skilled in formal business skills – surely, they must be among the best in the world! We saw numerous businesses dying month by month through the mess that Zanu PF made of our economy, meaning that those businesses that hobbled through to the other side – regardless of the colour of their skins – must be exceptionally gifted at keeping a business afloat. In any other country awards would be handed out: in ours, scarce and rare skills will be rewarded with a punitive policy which will only set the economy reeling backwards again.
It would be seductive to think that the people from the wheeler-dealer Group 3 will join forces with Group 2 and put their cheeky ingenuity to work in a formal business sector instead. I’m sure romantics will think that this is what indigenisation and economic empowerment are all about…? But anyone who hopes for this only has to cast their minds back to 2005, when Zanu PF set about trashing the livelihoods of those in the informal sector through yet another self-serving policy called Murambatsvina.
Far from empowering Zimbabweans, Zanu PF brutally destroyed them – deliberately, calculatedly, with violence. People died. Children starved. Thousands and thousands lost their homes. In winter. When it is freezing cold. It’s worth pointing out that those affected by Murambatsvina were all indigenous and also disempowered, but Zanu PF wasn’t as puffed up with self-righteousness in those days… were they?
Why now float a policy that is ostensibly about economic empowerment, when barely five years ago Zanu PF was stripping indigenous Zimbabweans of the very little they had? Why should anyone on the receiving end of Zanu PF’s thuggery five years ago ever believe that suddenly they will be empowered by the same party now? It’s all absurd.
The bottom-line is, Zanu PF wouldn’t know real economic empowerment if it smacked them in the face and stank of dead-fish.
After all we’ve been subjected too, Zanu PF now swaggering around masquerading as a champion of empowerment, literally makes me feel ill. My nausea reached high levels yesterday when it was reported that Saviour Kasukuwere apparently declared to journalists
“There is no going backwards,” he said, “There are those who think the regulations would be changed. Forget it. Forward ever, backward never.”
The Zimbabwe Times write that Kasukuwere then went on to castigate
journalists whom he accused of have developed the habit of opposing every policy that comes from Zanu-PF without giving themselves the opportunity to study its intensions.
He said clever journalists should seize the opportunity to also empower themselves through the vehicle. (My emphasis).
We all know what that means, but Eyewitness News spelled it out for the hopeless romantics amongst us with a story titled “Write nice on BEE & we’ll empower you”. They wrote:
Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation Minister told reporters on Monday that if they write good stories about black empowerment he would make sure they were “empowered” too. (My emphasis).
Kasukuwere appeared not to say what would happen if reporters instead continued to write the truth, but one can assume they are unlikely to find themselves on the receiving ends of ZanuPF bestowed ‘gifts’ – i.e. rewards for being good to the monster and writing lies. One can also assume that it would be irrelevant whether they were indigenous or not, what matters is how much they appeased the Zanu PF machine.
And there it is in a nutshell: ‘empowerment’ in the Zanu PF lexicon could be loosely defined as “you scratch my back, we’ll scratch yours”. In any other lexicon the word defined in this way would be referred to as ‘corruption’.
But bowing to Zanu PF largesse is the fastest way to board the gravy train, and catapult oneself into Economic Group 1, the fastest growing pool of multi-millionaires in the country. A group that somewhow managed to become disgustingly wealthy while the majority literally starved or were forced to become economic migrants. A group that castigates the West, whites, asians and foreign investors from ostentatious homes with fridges packed with luxury food items and garages housing mercedes benzes and fancy four-wheel drive vehicles.
It is grotesque. Is this the type of ‘economic empowerment’ we want for Zimbabwe?
Unfortunately, the skills required to reach this group are not skills conducive to running a successful business, or skills that lend themselves to the betterment of our nation: this is aptly demonstrated by Zanu PF’s catastrophic efforts to run a successful country (yet another reason why Zanu PF has no authority to talk about the meaning of ‘economic empowerment’).
Their incompetence is beautifully demonstrated by the impact the indigenisation policy has had on the economy today: trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exhange has plummeted from a daily average of US$2 million to US$500 000 since news of the regulations broke (SWRA).
Credit where credit is due: when it comes to destroying an economy, Zanu PF are world class leaders.
March 10th, 2010 09:30
Thanks! This is a fantastic article. A really refreshing breakdown of the real economic players in this country and the dynamics of how they work. The originality of the piece is thought-provoking too – if i can add one comment that concerns me.
While undoubtedly you are right that this scheme will benefit only the cronies and sycophants, it will obviously be sown heavily in the public media and in election campaigning – for the benefit of poor zimbabweans who may be tempted to believe in ZANU’s empowerment strategy. My concern is for the effect that this will have on us, in terms of deepening a culture of dependency, reliance and expectation. How is it empowering to continuously suggest to a population that they need not work to reap benefits. Sit back, support the right party, and wait for the gravy. This is the very opposite of empowerment and sustainability.