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(TALKZIMBABWE) Biti: Badger that dug its own hole

Biti: Badger that dug its own hole
By: Itayi Garande
Posted: Saturday, October 16, 2010 4:07 am

POLITICS can become a game of pretension like a stage drama enacted by a crudely planned scheme of things, casts, dresses, clichés, performance images and the end goals, if entered too soon. The actors pretend to be something they are not, but make the audience feel entertained with the unthinkable.

We are slowly waking up to the fact that Finance Minister Tendai Biti’s economic and political logic is not as watertight as we thought. His political stage mask is crumbling in our very eyes as he engages in debates in The Herald.

For someone who spent most of his time in opposition and in Government arguing that The Herald was not affording him the right to freedom of speech, opening his piece entitled ‘‘Messianic complex, bane of Zanu-PF’’ (The Saturday Herald October 9 2010) with a disclaimer that debating Nathaniel Manheru was always going to be "risky", makes for interesting reading.

The comedic benefit of watching Biti fail in articulating his economics is undermined by the cold realisation that he fundamentally does not fully appreciate the intellectual and ideological requirements of the ministry that he controls.

In the ongoing debate with Manheru and others in The Herald, Minister Biti’s instinct has not been to learn from some alternative viewpoints, but to reach for the debating-hall comforts of cheap populism; which is commonplace in the MDC-T.

This bit of lame ideological freelancing has disturbing resonances with a comment Biti himself made on CNN’s chat show, African Voices.

"I am a strict student of history", he told his interlocutor.

"I am fascinated by historical facts".

He added, "I sometimes sweat when I go to the ministry (of finance) and if you go home at 10pm you are very lucky. The body is not designed to be pounded with the kind of pressure we go through at the ministry".

When asked "Do you feel like a sacrificial lamb?" he failed to sense the irony in that question that needed a more media savvy person to tackle. Minister Biti, in a classic gaffe, retorted, "You have to rely on God, your instincts, your intelligence, or lack thereof."

He is the only minister that would rely on "lack of" intelligence in such an important ministry.

The minister falls further into another media trap, when asked if his job was the worst job in the country. He replied: "When people look at you, they see this façade . . . but they don’t know the doubts you have. Behind this façade, there’s just a little boy looking for answers!"

Fascination by historical facts is not enough preparation for such a gargantuan task — of uplifting millions out of poverty, increasing social mobility for a once-marginalised population and redistributing land.

"The little boy looking for answers" should learn to accept alternative viewpoints and, not denigrate those who question his reasoning.

Debating by debasing

A number of debating points were raised against Biti’s piece and many people hoped that he would respond to those points in his subsequent contributions but, instead, he changed the whole debate, answered his own questions, and debated with himself.

He showed his penchant for cosmetic rather than substantive debate on issues; and as slippery as an eel, he changed the focus of the debate and resorted to attacking politicians because of their age (as if age is a crime), twisting Zimbabwe’s history in the process.

It was George Orwell who said that when cornered, some politicians try to control the present and the future by distorting the past.

Distortion of information, especially history, is a ploy used by agents of imperialism, through various guises, to control the future, often by degrading the past. It is a trap.

For instance, Biti talks about the right to land, but his history is selective, starting only from 2000, forgetting the various land tenure legislation that created that skewed land policy in the first place.

He talks about the economic meltdown of the last 10 years, coinciding with the founding of the MDC-T, but not the socio-economic successes of the pre-MDC period — a period that moulded him into the lawyer that he is today.

The MDC-T has made its name on this "misinformation" garb, with its fuggy baggage and made a cosmetic impression on a vast majority of our people, with their vicious claims that they are liberators of some sort. The French would say: "L’enfer c’est les autres", the other person is the devil, in this case Zanu-PF.

The MDC-T lot are guilty of trivialising serious national issues, mucking real discourse, and making a mockery of issues that involve the lives and livelihoods of millions of our people.

It is not only the MDC-T that must own the debate on the future of Zimbabwe, contrary to Biti’s illogic. Zanu-PF and any other stakeholders in Zimbabwe must be in the thick of the confabulation.

The anti-capital Zanu-PF State

Biti argues that Zanu-PF is anti-capital and that the post-colonial leadership is "lazy, slow and omery" incapable of creating a national bourgeoisie; yet immediately discredits his argument by naming successful businessmen like Econet’s Strive Masiyiwa, Shingi Mutasa, Mutumwa Mawere, etc who made their fortune after Independence; as evidence that government was capital averse.

Econet’s shares today are the most sought-after in the country; and businessmen like Shingi Mutasa, Philip Chiyangwa and others are still thriving in the country; among other prominent indigenous businesspeople.

Biti fails to mention how Ian Smith’s regime replaced by that "lazy, slow and omery" leadership was anti-black capital; and how the post-colonial state made it possible for black capital to thrive.

Elsewhere, Biti murders his own argument and laments that Zimbabwe is not benefiting from its own resources, while international companies like Anglo-American, Rio Tinto, etc are.

He revealed recently that out of the US$250 plus million dollars made from mining last year, the country only got US$15 million in revenue.

He then accuses government of efforts at indigenising the economy and empowering people, saying foreign investors will fly away. Are they the same investors he says are benefiting from our resources?

This is the sad paradox of Biti’s economic reasoning.

He then suggests that Zimbabwe should have a "National Democratic Revolution".

How do you develop a "national democratic society" and encourage huge unrestrained inflows of foreign investment at the same time?

Why should the post-colonial state abrogate its responsibility to create a strong vibrant middle class to international capital? International capital shrinks the middle class, in the name of posterity.

America today has a shrinking middle class because of the fluidity and unpredictability of international capital.

Income inequality in the United States, defined as the gap between the top and lowest wage earners, has never been greater, despite spending an estimated US$13 trillion on poverty programmes since Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty" some 45 years ago.

President Obama has increased spending on anti-poverty programmes at an unprecedented rate, increasing spending on welfare programmes by more than US$120 billion in his first year-and-a-half in office, compared to the US$80 billion in welfare spending that President George W. Bush increased over his second term.

Still, the income gap widens and poverty persists.

Unbeknown to Biti, the West is not even practising its avowed brand of capitalism — and the Washington Consensus is now discredited.

The State in the West has become more interventionist bailing out big business.

So why should Zimbabwe or Africa for that matter, embrace that discredited model?

It is hard for some of us to support the untrammelled international capital that Biti wants.

Next door in Zambia, Frederick Chiluba’s experiment with international capital was disastrous.

The "vultures" are biting Zambia today pursuing huge payments in interest on loans advanced by international finance institutions.

Capital destroys indigenous industries. Where it flows into a country like Zimbabwe, how do we ensure that indigenous companies like Econet or Mbada Diamonds are protected? Lifting capital controls will hurt these companies.

Does Biti really think Econet will have survived if Steve Jobs had brought his Apple Company into Zimbabwe with its US$222 billion market capitalisation?

Does he honestly think Econet will survive if Microsoft, worth US$197 billion entered the Zimbabwe mobile market untrammelled?

Will Chiyangwa’s tourism interests compete with Richard Branson’s Virgin Group if it was to establish in Zimbabwe?

Biti and "transformational leadership"

Biti identifies former Ghanaian president, Mr John Kufour as his example of Africa’s finest leadership — the sort he calls "transformational leadership". He is selectively forgetful of the massive corruption allegations of Mr Kufour’s administration that led Ghanaians to kick him out of office.

Corruption in Ghana reached its zenith under Mr Kufour’s stewardship.

He is accused of turning his presidency into a kickback collection citadel, where millions of dollars of illegal kickbacks were extorted from various contractors and personally disbursed by the president himself.

Transparency International shows that in 2001 when Mr Kufour took over, Ghana ranked 55th on the Corruption Perception Index, and by 2009, when he was booted out, Ghana was ranked 70th.

Exactly a year after his Party was booted out of government; Ghana was back at the World Bank and the IMF "begging", despite huge discoveries of oil during Mr Kufour’s tenure, and abundant gold reserves.

The Mundi Debt Index shows a 7,14 percent increase in Ghana’s deaths from Aids, 3,3 percent increase in adult HIV and Aids prevalence, 6,21 percent increase in infant mortality, during Mr Kufour’s tenure; threatening Ghana’s achievement of Millennium Development Goals.

Mr Kufour’s "corrupt government" today is caricatured in the drinking bars to the trotro stations of Ghana.

This is the "transformational leadership"; which parcelled out various contracts to foreign investors at the expense of its indigenous businesses; that Biti proposes for Zimbabwe.

Ghana today is still battling with finding ways of adding value to its minerals — a debate started by Dr Nkrumah in the 1960s over bauxite and gold value addition.

Biti quotes Professor Ali Mazrui out of context, and does not appreciate his transformed thinking on Africa’s post-Independence leadership.

Starting as an avowed critic of post-Independence leaders of Africa, Professor Mazrui has transformed into a pan-African scholar who has deep admiration for Dr Nkrumah, among others, whom he calls the "post-colonial Black President of the World".

Speaking to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! in 2009, Professor Mazrui hailed Dr Nkrumah as one of the strongest African men "who is misunderstood" and equates his magnanimity to that of the great Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramses II, and the great Menelik II of Ethiopia who conquered the Italians.

Professor Mazrui today speaks very eloquently of the evils of the East-West rivalry of the 1960s-1980s and its effects on post-colonial Africa; especially in Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among other African states.

Biti, however, decides to refer to the old ideas of Professor Mazrui, to justify his own thinking.

The minister also fails to clearly appreciate Ghanaian economist George Ayittey’s "hippo, cheetah" characterisation of African leadership; incorrectly quoting him.

The "vampire states" that Ayittey talks about do not empower people in a way that the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme in Zimbabwe seeks to do.

Ayittey attacks corrupt governments like Dr Kufour’s and the various governments of his native Ghana and next door Nigeria.

He argues that Africa’s underdevelopment is a result of massive corruption, not Biti’s myopic notion about age, power retention, leadership change and something called "generational intervention".

Corruption costs Africa US$148 billion a year compared with aid inflows of US$25 billion in aid; and is not limited only to State institutions.

International capital has aided corrupt activities in Africa since time immemorial; and the international (read Western) banking system has harboured billions of Nigerian "blood money" and kept it out of that country.

In fact, Ayittey attacks politicians who use people’s suffering to achieve political ends.

Those people in Zimbabwe who have invited illegal sanctions are the ones referred to when he says: "Poverty is a business opportunity".

They are the lazy hippos, the "mati madii muchafa zvenyu nenzara" type.

Ayittey argues that in traditional African systems, there was consensus in decision-making and post-colonial governments should build on those systems; not alien Western economic systems that the MDC-T favours — systems that have caused the global financial crises and inflicted untold misery in Zambia, DRC, Zimbabwe, just to name a few.

At the World Affairs Council in 2007, the Ghanaian scholar argued that Africans "should go back to their indigenous systems and build upon them" and that the "African continent is littered with carcasses of foreign economic systems".

Biti and ESAP in disguise

Despite Zimbabwe’s high-economic performance over much of the 1980s, the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme lodged Zimbabwe in a quagmire of mounting debt, generally inadequate growth and plummeting living standards.

Why Biti is proposing a similar blueprint defies logic; and why he admires Dr Ibbo Mandaza or his acolyte, Professor Brian Raftopolous, proponents of this failed liberal democratic economic reasoning, is anyone’s guess; especially at a time when Wall Street and London City are running away from that economic reasoning — looking for new ways.

Biti is right to quote Dr Mandaza and Professor Raftopolous in the 1990s-2000s as saying "the revolution had lost its way" because it never embraced neo-liberal thinking in the first place. The Zimbabwean ‘revolution’ was never about embracing capitalism, but lifting the majority out of poverty and creating racial harmony.

Experimentation with ESAP was therefore a deviation from the "revolution" — especially expressed via the issue of land.

By quoting Professor Patrick Bond, and not highlighting the debate he is currently engaged in with Professor Mahmood Mamdan on Zimbabwe, Biti is being selective in his analysis.

The ongoing debate between these two scholars on the 2008 London Review of Books article entitled "Lessons of Zimbabwe'' written by Professor Mahmood Mamdan is enlightening and a must-read for Biti — as someone "fascinated" by history.

MDC-T: Zanu-PF’s progeny?

Biti is being a-historical and reckless in claiming that MDC-T "was a natural progeny of the failed post-independent dream of democracy, justice, freedom and prosperity in line with the real ideals of the liberation struggle".

What liberation struggle is he talking about? Surely it’s not Chimurenga I, II or III.

His party stands in the way of Chimurenga III today; which aims to complete the process of economically empowering the indigenous Zimbabwean people, and indigenising the economy.

In a rather crude way to justify this "revolutionary" characterisation of the MDC-T, Biti elevates party leader Morgan Tsvangirai to the same level as President Rupiah Banda, President Jakaya Kikwete, former Botswana President Festus Mogae, President Ian Seretse Khama, President Hifikepunye Pohamba and President Bingu wa Mutharika in the fight for democracy.

These luminaries have a proven track record of fighting for their people; not against their people.

Why he elevates Tsvangirai, a chief minister in President Mugabe’s State and Government, to the level of these consistent and unwavering African nationalists is anyone’s guess.

Why does he not lump him with the likes of Mozambique’s Renamo leader, Afonso Dhlakama — a man he has admiration for?

Remember that at the formation of the MDC, Tsvangirai met Renamo leader Dhlakama in Nelspruit, eastern South Africa for "consultation".

The meeting was facilitated by then MDC security chief, Mike Hogan, a former Special Branch operative during the Ian Smith regime.

Smith, by the way, assisted in the formation of Renamo together with the apartheid regime in South Africa to fight against revolutionaries in Mozambique.

Ironically, Biti has chastised, embarrassed and denigrated these revolutionaries calling them various derogatory names.

In November 2008, he wrote a letter to then South African president and Sadc facilitator, Cde Thabo Mbeki saying decisions made by the regional body on Zimbabwe were a "nullity" and calling them weak for not "censuring" President Mugabe.

How they became heroes overnight smacks of Biti’s own confusion and biased appreciation of Africa’s history, struggle and diplomacy and exposes a lack of his own personal sense of consistency.

What is consistent, however, is his compradorian position obfuscated in nationalist democratic, or nationalist socialist, discourse.

That’s why he makes veiled attempts at quoting Lenin and others; while ignoring the elephant in the room – the ruinous sanctions his party helped draft.

It is also interesting that whereas it may be perfectly logical for Biti to attack Zanu-PF leaders for believing Rotina Mavhunga’s claim that she could extract diesel from a rock; it wasn’t unusual that his mentor, Tsvangirai, recently sought divine intervention from the leader of Nigeria’s Synagogue Church of All Nations, Prophet T B Joshua, to help him become president.

Biti proclaims that such a man is the "undisputed and unquestionable leader of the MDC".

No one questions or disputes that he is the "heavyweight champion" of the MDC-T.

Many people, however, don’t believe he is the "undisputed and unquestionable leader of Zimbabwe".

Power, age, development

Biti thinks good governance is best served by youthful exuberance.

His argument about age in politics and about power retention is hot air. This is blinkered politics.

Biti speaks highly of President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade — an 84-year-old man who has led the Senegalese Democratic Party since it was founded in 1974, but does not ask him why he remains in power today.

Wade blows hot and cold when it comes to African politics.

While he can easily be classified as a revolutionary, his party, like the MDC-T, is a member of Liberal International, a group that includes Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, Hellen Zille’s Democratic Alliance of South Africa, and Elie Kumbu Kumbel’s Alliance Nationale des Démocrates pour la Reconstruction of Congo.

One does not need to be reminded about the work of these parties in relation to their governments; and their almost fetishistic interest in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs.

Biti argues that the post-colonial state "legislated other political parties out of existence and proscribed or circumscribed other institutions of dissent . . . such as the media or even interested groups".

While it is true of some African states, Biti fails to back that up with evidence from Zimbabwe.

Biti was a leader of the Students’ Union at the University of Zimbabwe.

He was a member of the National Constitutional Assembly, a member of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, a member of the Zimbabwe Law Society, a member of the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (of Edgar Tekere), a member of Forum Party (of Enock Dumbutshena), and now a member of the MDC-T party.

How did he manage all this if the government "proscribed and circumscribed institutions of dissent"?

He inadvertently reveals that these are "institutions of dissent".

Why can’t they be developmental, nationalistic and lobby government properly?

Why are they masked as something else then?

Dissent is a right, but surely a whole institution cannot exist for that sole purpose.

This, in a very crude way, explains why the MDC-T has become just that — an "institution of dissent" — and not a political party seeking to win power by democratic means. This has made its name "movement for democratic change" a misnomer and an outright joke.

This is why MDC politicians have cut these overly exuberant personalities that enjoy controversy (jambanja) transforming our important institutions — the Parliament, government offices, courts — into halls of shame.

Hopefully Biti will realise that the Zimbabwean story can never be told by denigrating its leadership, calling them names, and being forceful about change. Change, by its very nature, is organic.

You can plan it, but it will take a natural trajectory, nonetheless. You cannot, however, force it.

The story of Africa, in general, and that of Zimbabwe, in particular, has a lot of twists and turns and the MDC-T cannot claim superiority in the accompanying discourse. It is a national debate; not a single story based on MDC-T’s views only.

It is this "single story of Africa", to borrow the phrase of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and of the black race, as "the wretched of the earth", waiting for Western prescription and Western crumbs, that we should resist.

It is a dangerous characterisation of politics in a new independent, resource-rich Africa.

The smug, detached posture of know-it-all of the MDC-T, smacks of arrogance and condescending superiority. What Africa and indeed Zimbabwe needs is genuine appraisal of its achievements and under-achievements, and genuine discourse on challenges, not flourishes and over dramatisation exhibited by MDC-T leaders.

History shall judge them by their actions, not by their claims.

Itayi Garande writes from London, United Kingdom. He can be contacted via itayig@hotmail.com

This article is reproduced from The Herald

Labels: NEOCOLONIALISM, NEOLIBERALISM, TENDAI BITI

posted by MrK @ 3:46 PM