Maravi

(HERALD) The rise of a predatory State

The rise of a predatory State

BY any measure, the inclusive Government is fast losing its virginity and is just as quickly becoming the idiomatic woman with one leg in the house and one outside.

The fascination, nay — state of euphoria, that had gripped some people following the February 13 ceremony is being replaced by a deadening sense of the realities of the ugly politics that govern the world we live in.

Civil servants are agitating for real salaries months after someone promised them a meaningful pay as a given.

The citizenry is crying pitifully about the bills they are getting from parastatals and industries are still operating way below capacity.

Agriculture, which is the focus of this piece, has not been spared this jolting crash back to reality either.

Eat the constitution

And in all this the inclusive Government is telling the people to eat constitution-making while our leaders hold retreats and tour Western capitals on our behalf.

One cannot help but wonder where the real priorities for the people we elected lie.

The bedrock of what Zimbabwe is has always been agriculture.

It is the issue of agriculture that precipitated the standoff with the West.

It is matters to do with agriculture that led to the imposition of the illegal sanctions on the country.

It is agriculture that saw Zimbabwe becoming so polarised that even elections could not ultimately determine which party should lead the country.

But for some reason that the inclusive Government will not tell the people of this country, agriculture has become less important than penning a new constitution, kow-towing to the West’s demands for more "reforms", Johannes Tomana, and even Jestina Mukoko.

The inclusive Government would have us believe that if Tomana is fired and Mukoko is freed then we will have food on our tables and money in our pockets.

This is the same thing that the West that we are courting so ardently is telling us: until there are "meaningful reforms" (read the reversal of land reforms, and end of Gono and company), sanctions will remain and the people of Zimbabwe will continue to suffer.

This past week The Herald carried a story that portended massive shortages of wheat this year.

This year, Zimbabwe will be importing far more than it is producing and yet we are all supposed to be celebrating the inclusive Government — it can do no wrong and anyone criticising it must be angling for its collapse.

Where is the State while farmers scrounge around for resources so that they can feed the nation?

Is the Government telling the citizenry that it would rather go begging for money to import food than to capacitate its own farmers?

Surely it would be cheaper to grow our own food than to import it off money "donated" to us by the very same countries that imposed sanctions on us and ensured that our food self-sufficiency would be heavily compromised all in the name of regime change.

We shall eat what we gather

How exactly did we get into this mess?

Traditionally, the State has been very active in the development of the agricultural sector.

In fact, it would be safe to say that there is no country in the world that has ever developed its agriculture without an active State that is directly concerned with issues of inputs and production.

An aloof State has never been the bedrock of agricultural development and that is why Rhodesia never hesitated to support its farmers.

From Rhodesia up to now, ours has been an agro-based economy, it will remain so, and there is no way that we can talk of economic development when farmers are thrown into the shark-infested deep-end by a regime that is starting to bear the disconcerting hallmarks of morphing into a predatory State.

The inclusive Government appears more concerned with perpetuating itself by doing whatever it is the West desires without any regard for what the people of Zimbabwe require.

By any definition, that is what constitutes a predatory State.

Over the past years, Zimbabwe’s Government has played the role of the benevolent, welfare State that has a genuine interest in the food security of the populace.

Millions of dollars have been poured into agriculture by the State over the past 10 years and this is rightly so because Government is the one that said, "Let there be a land reform programme!"

It only made sense that the new farmer would have the institutional and financial support of the Government at a time commercial banks had made it clear that they were not interested in financing the crop of Mr Mandebvu who had just kicked Mr Jones off "his" land.

But now the inclusive Government has made it its core business to let the agricultural sector fend for itself.

In fact, we have been succinctly told that we shall "eat what we gather" and as things stand, we are literally going to be a nation of hunter-gatherers very soon because there will be nothing on the farms.

This started with immense pressure being applied on the Reserve Bank to stop what the ‘‘experts’’ tell us is quasi-fiscal expenditure.

Now with the inclusive Government firmly in place, the State does not care about guaranteeing food security through production.

Instead, we would rather send our Prime Minister on multi-nation tours and expect him to conjure some miracle that will see food growing on our farms.

Farmers need State support, period!

Dining with the devil

Early this year the Zimbabwe dollar was banished for a whole year and that means farmers have to source their inputs using American dollars and South African rands.

And we all know that they simply cannot afford to buy fertilizers and fuel for commercial production because like the rest of us they don’t have the money.

Incidentally, I have gleaned information pointing to the probability that the shelving of the Zimbabwe dollar was not a Cabinet decision.

This raises many issues — all of them frightening.

Because it could indicate a deliberate attempt somewhere to sabotage the ability of farmers to feed the nation and we all know that a hungry people is a people ripe for revolt.

But that is stuff for another installment.

The fact is, the issue of the Zimbabwe dollar aside, the inclusive Government appears to want to foment hunger in the nation.

We all know that the people in the inclusive Government and their friends and families will not feel the hunger pangs that the rest of us will when agricultural production completely collapses.

The surprising thing is that the neo-liberal economic model that does not allow "quasi-fiscal expenditure" is something that is being fed to us by Western nations that themselves spend billions of dollars every year propping up their own agriculture.

America and the European Union invest heavily in ensuring their agricultural sectors are in healthy condition for the sake of their people.

They understand that it is better to rely on your own production rather than depend on importing food.

But we go ahead and listen to them when they tell us that the State should not directly fund agriculture because this would amount to the unpardonable sin of "quasi-fiscal expenditure".

The wisdom of centuries of human existence has taught us that when we dine with the devil we must use a long spoon.

It is a piece of wisdom as old as it is self-explanatory.

But perhaps man has a penchant to push the limits. That is why we bungee jump, why we sky dive, why even we have risky sex.

There is something in us that drives us to dine with the devil with a spoon as short as possible and hope that no ill will come out of it.

And maybe this explains the reason why we are still rushing to the West for "economic assistance" after 10 years of watching these very same people destroy our economy.

Maybe this explains why we would like to court a Western world that wants us to adopt policies that can only result in national hunger.

They will tell us that the State should let the Grain Marketing Board stand on its own two tottering feet.

But the fact is GMB has no money and will not get any from anywhere anytime soon unless the State moves in to fund some of its core operations.

This is not just about the belly, it is about national security.

When we fail to produce enough to feed ourselves, and when we fail to import the food because we do not have hard currency in sufficient quantities to do so, then we shall be ripe for the kind of regime change that the West wants.

In as much as an army marches on its belly, so does a revolution.

And the revolution that is the land reform programme faces a very still birth if the inclusive Government insists on abandoning agriculture, which is exactly what the West wants.

We are virtually wasting our time imploring these people to give us money and to lift the sanctions they have on us.

Instead we should be entering into win-win partnerships with our friends in the international community so that we can get agriculture — and by extension industry — working like they should.

Virgin to streetwalker

The reality that we are facing is that the Prime Minister’s trip to the West is an exercise in futility because it will not result in the kind of tangibles that will boost wheat and maize production.

It is for this reason that for months Biti has found himself looking at blank faces whenever he asks "donors" to loosen their purse strings.

The asking price for the "aid" that the inclusive Government seeks is the pauperisation of the people of Zimbabwe — and that is a price too steep to entertain.

The people of Zimbabwe are supposed to be the real owners of the inclusive Government.

If the people want agricultural production then that should be so.

Do not try and convince them that their bellies will be full when we have a new constitution and fresh elections that the West will be happy about.

The people are father to the inclusive Government and this is not a chicken-and-egg thing.

And any attempts to make the wishes of the people of Zimbabwe subservient to those of the so-called donors, then surely the inclusive Government would have gone from virgin to whore in one breath.

mabasa.sasa *** zimpapers.co.zw

Labels: AGRICULTURE, NEOLIBERALISM, SANCTIONS

posted by MrK @ 5:53 AM