(TALKZIMBABWE) Reporting on Zimbabwe: singing for supper

Reporting on Zimbabwe: singing for supper
Prince Kahari - Opinion
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:36:00 +0000

IT is difficult, if not impossible, to solve complicated problems without considering many factors and the cause-and-effect relationships between those factors. Defining and displaying relationships helps. In almost all disciplines in social and pure sciences, there is some form of cause-and-effect analysis that is employed to have a holistic understanding of events, their causes and implications. But not in Zimbabwean journalism.

Anyone who read Peta Thornycroft's article entitled, "Get a credit card - they work, says confident Biti" published in The Sunday Independent on May 24 will realise that in Zimbabwean journalism the causes of events are less important than a description of those events.

Readers are fed with half-truths and incomplete analyses of major political events and one wonders what purpose these articles serve and whose interests they advance and or defend.

Thornycroft has become a very crafty wordsmith and to the unsuspecting reader, the motive is never entirely comprehended.

The truth is she has a very uncanny way of taking long-winded routes in describing otherwise very simple episodes; avoiding the causes of those episodes in that process.

The particular piece I refer to was meant to boost the image of Finance Minister Tendai Biti.

Thornycroft did "a good job", but only to those who do not realise that since Biti took over as finance minister, he has been implementing policies that were set by his predecessor(s), especially by then acting finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa.

But Biti is clever -- he talks about a "new economic policy", but does not have one. STERP is written Chinamasa all over and is a product of many other previous policies.

Biti mentioned soon after his appointment as finance minister that Zimbabwe was going to work on a cash budget. Besides the fact that almost all governments -- including the ones that bankrolled the MDC in its heyday -- are heavily indebted, Biti thought he would transform overnight an economy that was made to scream for a whole decade, without any borrowing.

Today he screams for aid. Effectively aid is borrowing and doesn't come cheap. Biti does not tell us how he will repay loans he is asking for.

Even the highly respected pessimist, Cathy Buckle called Biti's cash budget policy a "weird, wild, psychedelic dream!" It indeed is.

Biti literally halved Zimbabwe's spending plans, without halving the population of Zimbabwe, nor any other sector that depended on that economy. In fact Biti abandoned that "cash budget" policy soon after announcing it. Today he is mum on it.

Thornycroft's piece takes the cup! She called Biti the "confident" minister of finance. Excuse my pessimism. Biti looks and sounds less confident as each day passes, rarely talking economics.

He is the only finance minister who has made more political statements than any of his predecessors; yet he has spent the least amount of time thus far in that position.

He is the only finance minister who has made some serious errors of judgment in such a short space of time, starting with "halving the budget" then going to ask for more money (aid) to expand that "cash based budget". What happened to "spend what you have?"

Biti has also made misrepresentations to Cabinet and Cabinet Committees.

An interesting misrepresentation related to false allegations of the RBZ “borrowing US$1 billion without authority” which proved embarrassing when refuted with evidence.

In an interview with Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa in February this year, Biti said: "The Prime Minister has got goodwill ... and the Prime Minister has got friends" when asked where the money to pay civil servants was going to come from.

That goodwill has not been helpful and those friends are nowhere to be found.

Infact, the Sadc leaders Biti discredited during the Zanu PF-MDC talks are the same ones he's asking for help.

"I guarantee that the MDC is going to deliver positive change! And yes we can!" he replied, when pressed about the same issue of where the forex to pay civil servants was going to come from. That guarantee has not helped thus far.

Infact, today, Biti's tone has somewhat changed. His speeches are devoid of his "cash accounting" rhetoric. He speaks less like a minister of finance and more like a minister of home affairs -- even criticizing the West, who bankrolled the MDC for a long time.

How are their current demands going to change the material well-being of Zimbabweans and deliver food to their table?

Before the inclusive Government was formed, Biti denied the existence of illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe -- and his party, by not calling for their removal, actually supported them.

The naivety of those elements in the MDC who denied the existence of sanctions was mind-boggling. Some of the elements at the forefront of that denial are now, as ministers, asking for their removal.

Biti is quoted by Thornycroft as saying: "Senator Richard Luga of Indianapolis wrote asking about 'sanctions' on two banks (Zimbank and Agri Bank), and I said lift them as a matter of urgency."

"The two banks serve communal and small-scale farmers in particular," writes Thornycroft in contradiction of her previous articles suggesting that sanctions were only targetted against Zanu PF individuals.

The Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe, a targetted entity, used to employ thousands of Zimbabweans before the sanctions. Many more thousands were employed in the 21 plus companies designated by Bush. Those companies also brought the much needed foreign currency into Zimbabwe.

Thronycroft was very crafty, crafty and good, at describing how frustrated Biti was on his first day in office.

She quotes Biti saying that on his first day in office "they (staff at the finance ministry) said I have to pay salaries. So I said: 'How much?' I was told US$30 million and we had $2m."

Reality had struck. Spend what you have then. That is pay a $30 million dollar salary bill with only $2 million? That is "cash budgeting" - Biti's economic logic!

This is what the government had been battling with for the last ten years and none of the previous finance ministers were as scare mongering as Biti. None of them predicted anarchy and made "weird, wild, psychedelic" economic statements when confronted with challenges.

They simply got on with the job, under those given circumstances! Thornycroft failed to state the reasons for such "decay". She couldn't. Not because she didn't know them. It would have discredited the whole point of her piece.

She did not engage in some cause-and-effect analyses of the Zimbabwean situation. It was deliberate! She would have contradicted herself had she engaged in that exercise. That would have defeated the whole purpose of her piece.

Today's journalism. Some journalism indeed!