(HERALD) The revolution marches on its belly

The revolution marches on its belly

The budget has come, and unlike other things it does not come and go. We are stuck with it for the whole of 2010. What we can be sure of is half-hearted scrutiny from most of our MPs when debate on Biti’s document formally begins and so it shall be passed more or less as is.

To be fair, it is a sober budget by any measure; the kind of fiscal policy document that one would expect from any Finance Minister in a country in which everything is hunky-dory and the politicians are the "come-over-for-a-braai-this-weekend" types. Except everything is not normal.

And this is why the least we can ask of our pampered MPs — who are the undoubtedly pleased recipients of a Constituency Development Fund — is to ensure the Honourable Minister of Finance carries through on what he has said about agriculture.

The experience of this past year has shown us that saying something shall be done and actually doing it are two very different things.

Biti effectively sat on US#510 million from the IMF for a good three months while farmers, and the rest of the nation with them, wailed pitifully about money for inputs.

Biti has also acted in a rather strange manner over funding from the African Export-Import Bank and the PTA Bank, which together are ready to give us some US$400 million that can go to agriculture and other key sectors.

So what assurances exactly do we have that agriculture will this time around be treated as decently as its worth to the national economy deserves?

Saboteurs or clueless clowns?

President Mugabe made a very interesting point when he met some of those poor, neglected farmers in Mutasa this past week.

We all know that the Head of State and Government is a consummate politician who knows how to play his cards very well, and all the time with that huge dose of national interest that is woefully lacking in most of our political and economic leaders.

We also know that he has the cojones to express his mind so clearly and unambiguously that there is no danger of him ever being misquoted.

Similarly, we know too that he can choose to be strategically demure in his public statements and in the process say so many things in so few words.

Which is precisely what he did in Mutasa.

"Tanga takaronga seHurumende zvirongwa zvemwaka uno kuti varimi vawane mbeu, mafetiraiza nezvekurimisa…

"Panoratidza kuti panova nekunyeperana kana kuti vanhu vatakapa basa havana chavanoziva nezvebasa racho kana kuti havasikuda kuita basa racho," he said.

Very clearly he said there were members of the inclusive Government who had sabotaged the current cropping season.

But he did not say who, and neither will anyone be able to name names in public.

Not that he feels it doesn’t really matter, but rather maybe because he is aware that we all have an idea of why ASP Marketing has not been given the legal guarantees it requires to push over US$100 million worth of inputs into Zimbabwe.

And to be true, the names don’t really matter.

What matters is whether they did these heinous and treasonous things out of ineptitude or constructive intent (I would much rather prefer that it is because they are complete dunces who don’t know their toes from their elbows).

What really matters is the political interests these names and faces represent.

Subsidies: good for EU, bad for Zim

The argument we have been told is that Government has no business subsidising private farmers. All manner of legal and economic mumbo-jumbo — or perhaps what Christopher Dell should more correctly call voodoo economics — is rolled out to justify the lack of support to farmers and institutions like GMB and Agribank. And all of them sound so pretty and logical that political neophytes, or more precisely intellectual virgins, would tend to think are sensible neo-liberal economics.

The people who advance these arguments will not tell you that it is Government’s core business to take care of the pillars of the economy, in this case agriculture.

And more crucially, they will not tell you that the European Union spends nearly half of its budget on subsidising agriculture and ensuring farmers feed the nation.

It has been stated in this column before and it will be stated again: in as much as an army marches on its stomach so does a revolution.

This is why Western governments, think tanks and non-governmental organisations are pressuring some members of the inclusive Government not to support agriculture.

At play over the past few months has been a calculated attempt to starve the new farmer of resources for three reasons: the resultant hunger causes anger directed at politicians, it gives NGOs room to come in with their political food aid, and it paints the Land Reform Programme as a failure.

Couple this with the fascination over a land audit and all the pieces fall in place.

We should find it strange that the West has suddenly been eager to support smallholder, peasant farmers and those members of the inclusive Government President Mugabe referred to in Mutasa feel so self-righteous about assisting.

There is never any noise from MDC-T when it comes to support of the small farmer and we should question ourselves why this is so.

The logic is as simple as it is repulsive.

The new farmer who is trying to become a commercial farmer to replace the settler who is so supportive of MDC-T should not get assistance.

Support small-scale agriculture and make it clear that the black man is only good as a peasant farmer and not a commercial farmer.

And this brings us full circle to what Biti has in store for agriculture over the next two or so years.

Farmers have said they are cautiously optimistic about the vote he gave them in his 2010 National Budget presentation.

But what we really want to know is what Biti is going to do about those saboteurs in Government that his chief executive, President Mugabe, spoke about this past week.

His performance on this front over the past year certainly cannot be described as enviable and anyone would be justified in feeling that Biti let agriculture down long before the rains started pounding.

To show his commitment, perhaps he could start by unlocking — late as it is — those inputs that are in South Africa and waiting to cross the border.

Hopefully by now Biti has sent that one little letter that could have made the difference between survival and a bumper harvest.

Ambassadors of doom

Five soon-to-be representatives of the State in foreign missions went on a tryst to the Czech Republic recently. These ladies and gentlemen who are going to represent this country in other lands found it prudent to throw away all protocols and go on an unsanctioned trip to Prague.

So if they go on junkets that are not sanctioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as their employer, whose interests are they representing?

More so, whose interests will they be representing when they finally get posted in those foreign missions where they will be drawing thousands of dollars in taxpayers’ money as salaries?

Such behaviour, surely, is but a shadow of the parallel structures looming so large and so menacingly over the inclusive Government.

And on that issue, we should be justifiably wary of the Constituency Development Fund and the potential it has of being used to funnel slush funds to further the agenda of the parallel government.

The fervent hope is that Mariyawanda Nzuwah will indeed do something about all those spooky characters entering Government buildings and working in State offices and yet they are representing an interest that is as strange as it is malevolent.

Threesomes have never quite worked and there is little evidence — on the strength of what is happening — that this ménage trois will give much satisfaction to any of the parties involved.

l mabasa.sasa *** zimpapers.co.zw