(STICKY) (HERALD) It’s all about the Zanu-PF DNA
COMMENT - Running comment follows below...It’s all about the Zanu-PF DNA
By Tendai Biti
NATHANIEL MANHERU’S article published in the Herald of September 4, 2010, titled "Privileged proletarians: when the beautiful ones are not yet enough" makes interesting reading.
To be fair to him, his articles are a must-read for the simple and good reason that they betray the inner thinking of the more informed components in Zanu-PF.
Of course, his writing style is loquacious and prolix which is typical of university students of his generation who thought that big words and verbosity are a sign of superior intellect.
He is still to learn that communication is predicated on the defection to simple and efficient language.
The shorter the better, the simpler the more effective.
[Agreed, but then it comes down to what is being said and communicated... - MrK]
In the article under discussion, three critical issues and conclusions are made which invite further debate.
The first issue is the attempt and conclusion to reduce the fight between the shareholders of Kingdom and Meikles as a simple Manichean fight between Nigel Chanakira and John Moxon.
The second, borrowing on Amilcar Cabral and Franz Fanon, is an attack on the black middle class in Zimbabwe, its immaturity and indeed its capacity to reproduce itself through legitimation by whites and white capital.
[And the accomodation of that capital through neocolonial policies - also known as economic 'business as usual'. - MrK]
Thirdly, is the glorification of the current empowerment programme and the consequent question why black middleclass or elites who are the intended beneficiaries, are in fact opposed to the same.
[Not all of them. The point is that if there is a choice between two policies, namely a privatisation of state companies which inevitably means that these companies end up in the hands of the old familiars (Glencore International, Anglo-American De Beers, or Chinese or Indian companies), and an Indigenisation policy which puts at least 51% of these companies in the hands of ZANU-PF elites, who at least are Zimbabweans, then the second policy of indigenisation is the preferred option. Personally, I think any government worth it's salt needs to make parastatals run well, not shift the responsibility to foreign ownership or foreign corporations. Which is not a criticism of ZANU-PF, but a criticism of the very concept of privatisation, and the corruption that it provokes. - MrK]
Questioning the black middleclass and its relationship to capital in the post independent state is legitimate.
Indeed Amilcar Cabral, Franz Fanon and many others do a fantastic job in exposing the limitations of this class.
There can be no question about the comprador role that this class has played and its limitations in defining itself other an intermediary accessory body that is content to serve as a managing class to white capital.
Part of the problem of course lies both in the pre and post colonial education system, which trains the African child to be a subservient seller of labour.
The education system does not allow us to have bigger horizons other than being a teacher, nurse, doctor or accountant.
African children are taught to write "application for vacancies" and to prepare curriculum vitae as opposed to "crafting business proposals" and strategic business plans.
[Agreed. But what I find necessary is to differentiate between local and national business, and transnational corporations. I am sick and tired of hearing other neoliberals talk about ownership of the economy and saying that it doesn't matter who owns the economy. It most definitely does - look at Asia. They have no foreign ownership of their economies, which is exactly why they are growing by leaps and bounds. Local businessmen will expand their local business before they start setting up the same business in Australia or the EU. There has to be a sense of NATIONALISM and NATIONAL PRIDE when it comes to conceiving economic growth. Or, you end up with an economy that is completely irrelevant to the local population. Chinese businesses doing business in Zimbabwe, rather than being a Zimbabwean business, with profits expatriated to China or other places around the globe, and even workers being imported from China. (Just to use China as an example.) It matters a great deal who owns the business. - MrK]
Glaringly missing in Manheru’s analysis is the responsibility the post-colonial State must hold in its failure to create a mature middleclass and indeed for that matter a black bourgeoisie.
It is my contention that the post colonial states in general, and indeed the post-independent Zimbabwe Government in particular, have been intoxicated by one thing and one thing alone, the power retention agenda.
[Complete nonsense. There is a reason why Zimbabwe has the highest literacy rate, while in countries that have adopted neoliberal economic education policies (user fees) are seeing more and more children walking the streets. ZANU-PF introduced universal education and healthcare throughout the 1980s, and it was only the intervention of the IMF/World Bank with their discredited austerity policies that put a stop to it. It is ZANU-PF, not the MDC, which has redistributed the land to over 320,000 families. That did not make it more popular around the world, now did it? In fact, before land reform, President Mugabe was actively feted, and given a knighthood. If he had wanted to spend his old age in quiet, he would have never progressed to land reform. This was not a 'desperate attempt to cling to power', to use the hyperbolic sloganeering so in vogue with the MDC. This is the fullfillment of the liberation struggle. Same as with indigenisation, even if it is flawed - it is better than nothing and much better than the alternative - privatisation. - MrK]
This is in betrayal of a proper developmental State underpinned by democracy, the rule of law, social protection and social justice under a vibrant social economy.
[How about economic justice? - MrK]
In short, the post-colonial State and the post-colonial elites have failed to develop what Lenin calls the national democratic State, which is a precondition to the liberation of the potential of not just workers but so too the potential and the leverage of capital including black capital.
[Instead of looking at Lenin and Russia, why not look at how the Keiretsu and Chaebol of Japan were built? There is a lesson in state and private sector cooperation. However, what is important is seeing Zimbabwe from the point of view of Zimbabwean (Southern African) history. The truth is that the old colonial era corporations are still around, and are looking for any opportunity to make a comeback as the owners of state assets. LonRho now has LonZim. Anglo-American still owns the global diamond monopoly. They would be the major beneficiaries of privatisation, even a weak privatisation. And good luck trying to get such foreign entities to ever pay taxes or share profits in Africa - they won't. Examples are not only Zambia, but Botswana, where Botswana only gets about 12% of the country's diamonds. Foreign ownership anywhere is a losing proposition for the people and the economy of the country. Even the Founding Fathers of the United States were against it - almost 300 years ago. - MrK]
Political power has failed Africa and political power has emasculated the growth and development of Africa.
[Don't discount the machinations of the old colonial powers, and new ones like the United States. Just ask the Congolese what happened to Patrice Lumumba. - MrK]
At independence in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, the GDP of many African countries was comparable to those of many in Europe and South East Asia.
Ghana for instance, had the same GDP with South Korea but 50 years later, the two countries are not comparable in terms of global competitiveness, GDP, per capita income and the quality of citizens’ lives.
[Who owns the Ghanean economy and goldmines (i.e., Ashanti Gold), and who owns the Korean economy (i.e. Daewoo, Lucky Goldstar or LG, etc.)? Same with Japan. Who owns Mitsubishi, Honda, Fujitsu, etc.? Japanese do. Not Brits, Americans, or anyone else. They protect their markets, which is why and how they accumulated wealth. They do not give away their people's wealth with slogans like "We rather own 10% of an elephant than 100% of a rat". - MrK]
To be fair, there are some countries that have developed without democracy, Singapore and China being good examples.
[But all of them developed without opening their domestic markets to foreign ownership, and with massive state involvement in the economy. Most corporations in China, Taiwan, and the Koreas are state owned. - MrK]
But what is critical in these countries is the existence of a genuine leadership and genuine desire to uplift and develop its people.
The fact of the matter is that the inheritors of the African state at independence had no craft competence and craft literacy to deal with state craftsmanship.
[Neither did the inheritors of the colonial states of Asia. - MrK]
Put simply, while nationalism was a good and sufficient instrument for the democratisation and the decolonisation of the colonial sate, it did not have an answer to the post-independence challenge of development, democratisation and upliftment of the people.
[Actually they did - universal healthcare, universal education, even works projects, and the creation of infrastructure. In fact in Zambia, most infrastructure goes back to the priorities of the nationalist leadership of the first president, Kenneth Kaunda. Much of it was built with the help of the Chinese state (like Indeni, TAZARA, etc., and is still in use today. - MrK]
Franz Fanon in "The Wretched of the Earth" is vicious in his attack over the rulers at independence.
[Vicious in his attacks of the betrayers of the revolution. - MrK]
He states: "The national bourgeoisie steps into the shoes of the former European settlement …seen through its eyes, its mission has nothing to do with transforming the nation: it consists, prosaically of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the masque of neo-colonialism.
"The national bourgeoisie will be quite content with the role of Western bourgeoisie’s business agent, and it will play its part, without any complexes in a most dignified manner.
"But this same lucrative role, this cheap-jacket function, this meanness of outlook and this absence of all ambition symbolise the incapability of the middle class to fulfil its historic role of bourgeoisie."
Our very own Ibbo Mandaza makes the same point in his brilliant introduction to Edgar Tekere’s autobiography.
He laments that the post-independent State was inherited by peasant teachers and headmasters who simply could not understand State craftsmanship and therefore maintained the status quo of conformity.
He states: "As former school teachers who had never pursued a balance sheet in all their working experience, university graduates with little or no exposure to their Statecraft or business, the Zimbabwe leadership at post–independence constituted more of a caretaker state, facilitating an economy which, two decades or more later, remains quite firmly in the hands of the former white settlers and international capital."
[And a lot of that had to do with the way land reform was tied up in the Lancaster House Agreement. - MrK]
It is too early to assess the extent to which that stronghold has been relaxed on the strength of the land reform exercise. But the latter appears to have provided yet another opportunity for the parasitic bourgeoisie and comprador classes to engage in voracious primitive accumulation, with little or no real improvement in production nor the requisite contribution to industrialisation and the related increase in employment and economic growth.
[And please tell, what have the role of economic sanctions played in this situation? Even so, tobacco production has bounced back, and I am sure with even more state support and a lifting of economic sanctions, the new smallholder agriculture is going to take off even further than it has already. - MrK]
Indeed, today Zimbabwe is no nearer to establishing a national economy nor national bourgeoisie. This has been exacerbated by a bureaucratic bourgeoisie now characterised by rampant mediocrity and corruption: and leaders most of whom are not conversant with economic and financial issues, while simultaneously reckless and extravagant in the management of resources, including money which is simply printed in order to sustain and maintain an image of an "economic turnaround".
However, it is not just the lack of vision and the lack of craft competence and knowledge of Statecraft that explains the culpability of our post-independence rulers.
[What explains the MDC's adherence to the same neoliberal economic policies that have been rejected during the 1990s, when they were imposed by the IMF? What happened to the austerity measures which were so absolutely vital to revive Zimbabwe's economy? Is it not true that they have gone with the wind, after the 'discovery' of Zimbabwe's potential to export diamonds? It is a lack of vision on behalf of the MDC, to not only adhere to neoliberal economics, but to also want to create a bourgeoisie, rather than a broad based lower middle class society which is egalitarian. - MrK]
The lip service paid to the misunderstood ideology of socialism was also critical. That lip service explains the discomfort of Zanu-PF with capital and more importantly black capital.
Indeed, black capital has been treated more harshly.
Multinationals and the inward looking Rhodesian sanctions busting companies created by Ian Smith were allowed to flourish in the first years of independence. However, the same cannot be said for black capital.
Indeed, the political elite managing the state has been suspicious of competing spaces created by black capital.
[This is nothing new to any part of Africa, and it should be pointed out that such is not simply ZANU-PF behaviour, but elite behaviour. Elites, whether economic or political, always try to limit their competition, and that would not change if the MDC would ever take power. There is a reason parties in Africa remain in power for decades. The answer to that is to create strong institutions, and create a separation between the powers of state, not simply a change to another party. Elite thinking, nepotism, cronyism are no strangers to the MDC. There is a natural tendency of businesses and organisations to do business with people who they know and trust, and have built loyalty with. Only legislation can begin to make a dent in that. - MrK]
Thus, virtually every black person who has sought to graduate from petty intermediary capital to real ownership has been on the forefront of Zanu-PF attack.
[With so many people denied simple land ownership of a mere 50 hectares, somehow, my heart doesn't quite bleed for Zimbabwe's budding Donald Trumps. - MrK]
This includes the likes of Strive Masiyiwa, Nigel Chanakira, James Makamba, Shingi Mutasa, Nicholas Vingirai, Julius Makoni, James Mushore, Mutumwa Mawere, Mthuli Ncube and Jeff Mzwimbi, only to name a few.
In July 2004, the biggest bank in terms of bank turnover was Trust Bank.
Six months down the line, the bank’s primary drivers Chris Goromonzi and William Nyemba were in exile.
The black business that have survived has done so taking refuge in Zanu-PF, the likes of Phillip Chiyangwa, Saviour Kasukuwere, Ray Kaukonde, Sylvester Nguni and many others.
Not surprisingly, Nigel Chanakira seeks to follow the same route.
The latter group of people illustrates the subjective treatment of black capital by Zanu-PF and the inheritors of the State.
The religion of this system has been patronage and cronyism and the economy has been the mere temple of this cult.
Government tenders, licences including mining licences in Chiadzwa, the land reform programme have all been conducted on the basis of cronyism and clientelism.
[Well I know for a fact that this is not the case for the land reform program. Check out prof. Ian Scoones "A New Start For Zimbabwe?", in which he dispels the 5 most common myths (or should I say, MDC slogans) about land reform in Zimbabwe, including the myth of 'elite capture' of land redistribution, with an analysis of the 'situation on the ground' in Masvingo Province. - MrK]
Thus when black elites in Zimbabwe question the current indigenisation programme, they are not doing so on the basis that they are anti-empowerment. They are doing so on the basis of fear of precedent.
That is, the mere knowledge that Zanu-PF is not capable of doing anything without resorting to its natural DNA of patrimonialism.
[Except that's not true. See the article listed above. - MrK]
It is the very same fear of Zanu-PF’s DNA that explains the public’s response to its weighing in into the Moxon-Chanakira affair.
There is total mistrust of Zanu-PF’s objectivity.
[This is very funny, considering the MDC's history. When are they going to admit to the people out loud that there are economic sanctions against Zimbabwe, and that they were responsible for their drafting, and admit to the economic effects those sanctions have had on the Zimbabwean economy - and their lives and deaths? There is even an attempt underway to repeal the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, called the Zimbabwe Sanctions Repeal Act of 2010 (see here for more information and links), submitted by US senator Jim Inhofe. - MrK]
Objectivity and Zanu-PF are as close to each other as the same magnetic poles.
However, in mitigation it must be pointed out that the structural deficiencies of the colonial State were unlikely to produce any other post-colonial outcome.
The colonial State was a narrow and intrusive construct with a false accumulation model based on the extraction of raw materials, agriculture and minerals for the metropolitan capital.
It was a mere gatekeeper between the metropolis and the local environment. Thus Africa’s new rulers suddenly found themselves in control of a State which was not in control of its own resources.
African rulers were mere gatekeepers of an economy whose main role was to justify the externalisation of raw materials.
[And still are today - through neocolonialism and neoliberal economics, in so-called capitalist and free market economies. And that is the biggest challenge facing us today. All the conflict in the DRC can be reduced to that fact, as well as the US involvement in the Rwandan genocide through Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. What we need is a continent wide agreement that raw materials can only be sold through the state. That will end most wars on the continent. - MrK]
Rather than democratising and finding an alternative developmental model, the gatekeepers surrendered to the venality of gate keeping. Their sole concern became that of controlling the gates and nothing else. Hence, the power retention agenda.
[And the same fate is awaiting an MDC government. This is why the ZANU-PF is so strong and right. They want 51% domestic ownership, something the MDC wants (wanted) to avoid at all costs. First it was no ownerhip. Now it is '10%'. I would say 100%, and hire foreign businesses as management companies if necessary, and allow them to keep 10% of profits as an incentive, if they do the job right. Zimbabwe may need capital for investment, but it does not need foreign capital (and with it, foreign ownership) "desperately" as they like to say at the New BBC. - MrK]
These are hard facts missing from Nathaniel Manheru’s article.
To the majority of the working people on the African continent, independence did not amount to the transformation of their lives.
[It did, but I agree not enough. The answer is not 'free markets' though, because that is turning back what was achieved through independence. - MrK]
There is now a generational responsibility on the post-nationalist generation to complete the unfinished business of nationalism.
[Post-nationalist, indeed. - MrK]
This responsibility means transforming the State, attending the issues of democracy, constitutionalism and re-crafting the social economy founded on the basis of social justice and social development.
[But not economic justice? - MrK]
More importantly must be the crafting of a vision that subordinates politics to developmental issues.
In simple terms, this generation has the monumental duty of the transforming the State into a national democratic State.
Icho!
Tendai Biti is the Minister of Finance in the inclusive Government.
Labels: DEVELOPMENT, MDC, NEOCOLONIALISM, NEOLIBERALISM, TENDAI BITI, ZANU-PF
posted by MrK @ 3:03 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home