(HERALD) Empowerment: Learning from Rhodesia

Empowerment: Learning from Rhodesia
Friday, 10 February 2012 21:15

My instalment last week generated quite some response warranting a second take on the same subject. Of course a good many of my readers struggled with the word "zeitgeist", wondering whether this was English English or German English. Well, I shall have occasion to revisit this same matter in future. I need to hurry to another matter which is just as crucial, but even more urgent. Many in the country might have noticed that money is short, very short. What am I saying?

After all money should be short if it has to be money at all. Money is one commodity which must be short for it to retain its value as all those things it does and purports to be. So I sound ridiculous. Well, not quite. There is no sufficient money in the country to support the level of economic activity already underway in our anaemic economy. Outside writing and wringing concessions from opponents, my other sidebar is selling meats.

Maslow says I am trading at the lowest level of human need, trading at that level of non-deferrable. That means outside competition, with the attendant problem of a glut market, I should be able to push my tasty ware as man and woman eat to live, eat to reproduce life in them and by them.

After all the consumption curve never hits zero, let alone below zero, except in the grave. Yet this ware of life won't move at all. People have no money and are struggling to meet their needs for protein. I can only imagine how worse things should be for those pushing wares whose utilities resolve higher needs on Maslow's hierarchy.

Strange bedfellows

But the problem has expressed itself in more menacing ways. Some banks have been having problems in honouring withdrawals, much worse in respecting RTGs. The Central Bank has just put a cap to withdrawals, a measure which more than confirms that money is short in the market. Biti is slowly restoring the place and role of the Central Bank as a lender of last resort, itself a reverse paddle given that he has been unremitting in is attack of the Central Bank.

Something must have sobered him. Or something or someone must have pleased him into forgetting past rheum, past enmities. Or are these dire times twinning strange bedfellows? It has been a series of measures which point to extraordinary happenings, extraordinary times in the financial sector. We all sit up. We have been hurt before and won't want a second one. It will just finish us.

Biti of Zanu-PF

Biti makes another atypical argument, more accurately, another atypical charge. He accuses some banks of hoarding money, of refusing to share money. He makes it sound so easy, so mundane, but I can relate to what he is saying. He means there is little or no inter-bank borrowings, inter-bank transactions, as expected in a normal banking environment, indeed as required in our situation where the lender of last resort has been hacked, attacked, nay removed.

The minister's argument suggests there are surplus units within the banking sector, units he won't name possibly out of civility, possibly because he stands beholden to them. After all, attacking these surplus units - all of them foreign or international - would make him sound Zanu-PF, sound more like Kasukuwere and his Indigenisation crusade. That is not his wish-image. He has to remain urbane the Caucasian way, the MDC-T way! In reality he is referring to Standard Chartered Bank, Barclays Bank and Stanbic. They have money; they won't share. Much worse, they hold our deposits; they won't lend to us the depositors. Instead they are sending our deposits abroad, all in the name of safety. Or dividend. This is one negative result of dollarising. The currency of transaction is the currency of dividend.

Debunking safety argument

Let us quickly debunk the argument of safety. These foreign banks push the argument that Zimbabwe is high risk as borrower. But it is not high risk as depositor, cannot be given the colour of the currency of the deposit. But once the money is in, it must be rushed out quickly, to safety. Safety is UK, America. Safety is Europe. Haa-aa? America which is in financial turmoil?

Europe which is in financial turbulence? America, Europe of failing banks, failing economies, failing unions? Europe of failing states, defaulting banks, downgraded economies? This is where our deposits are being stashed, all in the name of securing them from us? It is sometimes useful to oversimplify matters, and I am doing just that. We cannot be talking about safety here. We need another adjective, another noun for this misdeed so draped in the false language of banking.

Feeding the cow next door

You ask certain basic questions. Why are our own deposits - our collective savings - as an economy, as a people, suddenly beyond us, suddenly put beyond our reach as borrowers? I am not talking about little withdrawals which are entitlements for depositors anyway. I am asserting our right to access national deposits, however collated, access them as borrowers, however configured.

I am asking why our deposits go to augment declining savings of other nations so far away from us geographically, so far away from us politically, so far away from us ideologically. Why? And those savings convert into investments there abroad, investments that work against our own economies, against our own people in the Diaspora even?

No shareholding, just depositors! And you hear that the consolidated fund of Government sits in these banks, away from our Central Bank. Why? So the public expenditure we postpone willy-nilly allows Europe and America to do things with our money, for itself? And that is right for an economy so spectre-thin?

Not any interest

There is an even more baffling argument. Here interest rates are anything between 15 to 20 percent. That is what you pay after borrowing. There in "secure" Europe and America, you will be lucky to get 5 percent interest on stashed capital, on borrowed capital. You take our deposits there for such low returns? And what do the local subsidiaries of those foreign banks pay depositors here by way of interest? Nothing. They actually charge you for depositing. A negative interest on deposits, in other words. They are doing you a favour to have and to keep your deposits. So it costs them nothing to accept your savings, in fact earns them something by way of so-called bank charges, but it also earns them modest interests to take these deposits to the "secure" abroad.

You begin to feel a lump of anger welling up. That means money got here negatively earns interest here as an affliction on depositors, and in an economy which cannot access its own savings. It develops Europe, America at zero interest. Or gets back at us as some international loan to which punishing interest rates attach. We have allowed this to happen, to go on unchecked.

Mangling Zanu-PF blueprint

Let me get a bit political. The MDC-T mantra has been to suggest that the Inclusive Government has stabilised the economy. It is not a selfless claim underlining a collectively enjoyed political dividend. It is an appropriation, more accurately, a misappropriation, of claimed benefits perceived to have flowed out of the inclusive politics that are upon us. That claim is always backed by a grinning face of Biti, all to personify, all to patent that "achievement". The MDC-T is staking an argument in anticipation of the next election. Of course the truth is that the Inclusive Government inherited a stabilisation plan from Zanu-PF, and has imperfectly stuck to that plan ever since.

That is the plan which has "stabilised" the economy, but in a form mangled by Biti in the name of resolving "outstanding issues". His first mangling was to fiscalise the monetary policy, something he is just beginning to retreat from by re-magnetising financial issues. He has maladministered the Zanu-PF blueprint, in other words, which is why the chickens are cluck-clucking on their way to the run, ready to roost.
He faces a grim prospect of monumental bank failures, failures huge enough to make the Renaissance story only a poor beginning. That means a throwback to the turbulent days before the formation of the Inclusive Government. And of course it means MDC-T will have lost its main claim to governing competence. After all, its hymen snapped the day it jumped into the bed of inclusivity for a riotous night. It cannot claim any benefit of doubt! That is one looming failure.

Drinking own urine

But there are real failures elsewhere in the MDC-T chamber. Harare is wriggling from typhoid. Our water has been made tastier by a bit of green matter, a bit of faecal stuff, thanks to our MDC-T. That reminds me of my young, wet days. You wetted your bed, sorry, floor, and you got yourself a mouthful of recycled urine. There were no beds in the village and as if the architecture of the floor was part of the punishing conspiracy, the hut floor was always uneven. There was no plankamanzi. It had grooves that would turn into parsimonious puddles of salty urine embedded beneath the straw mat above which stretched out the body bearing the guilty, watering limb.

On a worse day, the urine would flow out and beyond the mat, to collect in a neighbouring groove on the same floor, well away from the mat and the smelly blanket within which you lay coiled. With such an outward topography, it called for very little investigation for mummy to establish you had leaked, yet again.

She would step out into the yard, break the thin end off the branch of a peaches tree, prune it to sharpness before importing it into an otherwise snoring "bedroom", usually the family kitchen. Abruptly, she would pull off the smelly blanket leaving you bare, to land quite a few lashes on your tender skin, each whiplash accompanied by expletives.

You howled, you wailed but to no avail. Her anger appeased, she would ask you to bent down low, directly above your smelly produce now collected into this groovy testimony of poor work-womanship (our mothers always did the floors after our fathers would have dealt with the main frame of huts). Another lash motivated you and your whole soar frame would tilt and curl for forced gulps of your own now cold and dank urine.
It was supposed to be a cure for wet nights, in the absence of an even more hideous alternative, that of some monstrous looking locust to which I am still to paste a name. So Harare has wetted its bed; it must get its just desert from its MDC-T mother!

In spite of donors

The typhoid is threatening to spread far and wide, spread in a manner reminiscent of those days of cholera, under a Zanu-PF government. That means another domino has fallen for the MDC-T. The Health Ministry is under the MDC-T and at its behest, donors were pouring money into the sector, outside of financial structures of the Inclusive Government, all to ensure MDC-T appropriates and personalises the benefits. Still that did not help, could not prevent the contagion. Today MDC-T stands condemned, thanks to reverse logic.

A look at local government

And with Health falls local government. To the council, to the town board, to the rural council, the MDC-T controlled local government structures have been in turmoil. Harare has been, thanks to the thieving, the bicker and the senseless obstructions. The result has been a complete breakdown of water supply.

The result has been typhoid which has been infecting MDC-T support base. Mutare is in turmoil, with the white mayor there standing accused of minding "white interests" at the expense of majority ratepayers. And Mutare is significant, very significant. The whole Council is MDC-T and the party hoped other councillors would protest in solidarity at the suspension of Mayor James. No, the councillors would not. No, the ratepayers would not. Both are fed up and the remedial action by Minister Chombo look welcome by everyone, including MDC-T councillors! The party is at its tether's end, and faces a revolt. It is the same in Gweru where ratepayers mounted a demonstration a few weeks ago. Bindura is the same story. Kariba and Victoria Falls give a strange twist to the turmoil. Both mayors will have none of the MDC-T, originally their parent party. They want out. Kadoma has councillors who have been implicated in residential stands scum. One has already been convicted and faces more counts of such misconduct. It is in a swoon. You go to Gokwe, councillors are up in arms against their chairman. The message is very clear: MDC-T has given us a vivid glimpse of what to expect should they ever get into the saddle, stretch their calloused hands onto the wheel. Need we wonder that uppermost on their leader's mind at the meeting of principals this week was persuading the President to effect more humane arrests for erring ministers? He may have been making a case for even higher culprits, as we shall soon know.

-----Those who cannot run offices....

I won't talk about the circus in the energy sector where all is darker than coal we cannot deliver! What is worse, the MDC-T which has been denying the materiality of sanctions lacks the reason, excuse or alibi of sanctions which Zanu(PF) enjoys and cultivates in all its arguments. That means MDC-T has to explain all these lapses and failures, including its inability to run even its own offices, including that of its leader, now Prime Minister. Was it not only last year that the Prime Minister moved off Munhumutapa building claiming documents were being "stolen". He moved to a more secure building and the first test of that security in the new year is a monumental leak by way of some draft letter attributed to him and addressed to the President!

Incompetence has never been more glaring. And instead of dealing with all these issues, the Prime Minister convenes useless meetings in the name of Government Work Programme, all to give credence to "PM whips Ministers" headline! The whole thing was hot air which most ministers and ministries had deserted by lunchtime. It was a poor attempt to shore up the Prime Minister's sagging authority, authority set to sag lower than the hemp of an old woman's petticoat. He has simply worked himself to a lamentable status where he cannot be associated with any meaningful initiatives in Government. His situation has been further compounded by his western donors who are busy preparing for a leadership reshuffle in his party. It is all gloomy.

-------The chickens are coming home------

I wondered off my point on banking. The good news is that the pent-up demand for cash will not be appeased by anything short of a pent-up supply of cash. And time is not on Biti's side. Faith in the banking sector is beginning to crumble. Businesses which make deposits are no longer able to access money for salaries or other running costs. A new ethos of depositing a small fraction while retaining a larger part of savings, has already crept in, all triggered by an untidy way in which civil servants bonuses were handled last year, something Biti is now trying to correct through staggered pay days. We recognise this behaviour from pre-Inclusive yesteryears. The only trouble is that signals of a sick financial sector are coming to the market every day, increasing panic. Good news because sooner, Biti will have to use the Banking Act and other instruments like they are supposed to be used in defence of this economy, this country, this nation. We have enough instruments to deal with errant banks, enough reasons to make all banks responsible, corporate citizens. No banking market, here or abroad, allows any bank to coral deposits from a people for onward stashing abroad. No banking market allows banks to hoard money without releasing a corresponding level of the same money in loans to national borrowers.

------Borrowing with your own -----

And there are benchmarks. And there are many instruments we can invoke to ensure compliance. But we will not do it because the banks belong to our political benefactors. We would rather go to the Afreximbank to borrow some $80m at higher interest rates yet well over $450m of our money has been stashed abroad. Matters simply won't balance and Biti has little choice but to become a little Zanu(PF) to get things moving. He is already taking on the hue of the master anyway. Has he not buckled on SDRs? Has he not already savaged these foreign banks subconsciously? Is he not already fighting the Americans on diamonds? The chickens are slowly coming home to roost. When you speak from mountain tops, you rail at those who will not wear bear-coats in the kitchen. Finally, Biti and his boss have made it into the kitchen and, yes, it's warm, it's warming!

-----Lessons from Rhodesia -------

Now my main point. We need to be a bit tidy in our convictions. We are proponents of Indigenisation and economic empowerment. We have done well to foster local, indigenous banks. They have done reasonably well under the circumstances, with CBZ bearing the flag. And CBZ has, almost single-handedly, become a surrogate lender of last resort, become the bank of Government, apart from being the black man's only source of loans. Yes, black man and woman because in its operations, the financial market here asks for your colour, indeed follows the colour line. This is an apartheid sector in a free Zimbabwe. CBZ has been funding agriculture, funding SMEs, managing Government finances without holding Government's account. It has been bailing out parastatals. Yet anyone who makes money from CBZ loans, goes to foreign banks for deposits. The story is the same with all other indigenous banks. That way we have bled those we seek to empower. And when external facilities come, including SDRs, we inject liquidity into all, even favouring banks whose sole purpose is to collect and externalise deposits here. Is it very difficult for Government to distribute its instruments to each according to how well they have carried the cross of public cause? How does one justify injections by way of agricultural funding into banks that will not subscribe to agro-bills? Yet we have been doing it. Yet even as little depositors, we have been running to indigenous banks for loans while running away from them for deposits. Are we serious? The absence of well interlinked instruments that enable us to respond to, and implement a policy systemically, comprehensively, that is our problem. On that one, we need a leaf from UDI Rhodesia. The resists knew how to use the State to reach own ends. Icho!

nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw