The Sunday News
Dr Bongani Ngwenya
Preamble:
PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa’s appeal to countries that imposed the targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe for their removal is quite justifiable as his administration has opened a new page economically and politically.
In his statement published by the New York Times, which he also posted on his Facebook page, the President said those insisting on the illegal embargo were living in the past. This followed the decision by the United States of America to extend the targeted sanctions.
“Zimbabwe is changing — politically, economically and societally — and we ask those who have punished us in the past to reconsider their sanctions against us. Zimbabwe is a land of potential, but it will be difficult to realise it with the weight of sanctions hanging from our necks,” he said.
If I may be allowed to be a bit controversial today. I want to try and put the current economic problems that Zimbabwe is facing in a broader political, social and historical context, to suggest that the economy and society we live with today are the result of a set of values we have sub-consciously come to embrace for a very long time, and to suggest some real causes for optimism such as the new political dispensation in the country that we can use this crisis, which I have decided to refer to as the “crisis of disconnection” as an opportunity to build a better and more sustainable economic recovery, growth and social justice for all.
The crisis of disconnection:
Some analysts and some of us included are noticing the progress in attracting Foreign Direct Investment that is being made, though the progress is never as fast as what people would have hoped for and expected. There is a strong feeling among the analysts that Zimbabwe’s ability to attract foreign investors is badly frustrated by the high cost of doing business, erratic electricity supplies, high taxes and a poor transport infrastructure. To me these factors are hamstringing the potential for domestic investment more than the potential for foreign direct investment and my argument is that Zimbabwe’s ability to attract foreign investors is badly frustrated by the crisis of disconnection that has been there for a long time now.
I believe we are living through a deep crisis of the previous political economy. At its core is a corrosive problem of disconnection as a result of the past political decisions that were made, which is actually about a sense of powerlessness that we have found ourselves in.
It is becoming very difficult to untangle ourselves from. The perpetuation of the targeted sanctions by the USA is evidence of how rooted and entrenched the resentment of the old Zimbabwe’s political and economic policies by the West and the international community is so deep. Naturally, politics is the traditional way that a society expresses its own sense of ownership of destiny, but our past politics has been a failure. The economic difficulties that the country is suffering are a symptom of political and social/cultural failure in which we have allowed ourselves to become dependent on a political-economic model which was flawed, and has accelerated and legitimised the collapse of the values and virtues that we needed as a society.
I would like to take a minute to flesh out this analysis and how we might convert it into a positive programme for renewal. I want to suggest we should view the persistent negative perceptions of our country by some sections of the international community, notwithstanding the positive and good signs of warming up to the country by the United Kingdom and other European Union countries so far not as the cause of our economic predicament, but actually as a symptom of a deeper problem in the way we have allowed our political economy to evolve in recent years.
Now, I know “political economy” is an alien, intellectual Westminster term. But I believe the people of this country are coming to make sense of the state we are in in their own terms. Instead of thinking that everything was fine until the culmination of the hyperinflation era of the 2008 the then Government and political dispensation should have abandoned the unpopular policies and read the signs and symptoms as indications of a deeper crisis of political economy in which public faith in the very institutions and structure of our system of Government was draining away, and had been draining away for quite a long time.
I believe that underlying the current economic problems we face is a deeper sense of a system gone wrong, a deeply broken covenant between citizens and state, inter-generational tension and an increasingly fragmented and dysfunctional public value set.
Politically, people saw the political parties and political class as part of the problem more than part of the solution, and felt a rising sense of frustration and disappointment at the powerlessness of modern life. Socially, people felt increasingly isolated and atomised. Powerless to shape their own destinies, all too often living beside, but not knowing, even their neighbours, and with too little time for the things they knew really mattered. All what mattered was how to survive, how to put food on the table.
This is what I call the “crisis of disconnection”. Disconnected economy, politics and society.
On a positive note, the new political dispensation gives this country some sense of hope for a sustained and sustainable recovery, and the new Government should use this crisis as the basis for embracing a profoundly different — more locally driven and more connected — model of economic growth and social and political reform — building a more connected model of political economy — both a practical and social reconnection.
And to suggest that the economic situation and challenges that the new Government and political dispensation faces to build a more sustainable economic recovery is an opportunity to rebuild something not just economically sustainable, but a model of economic growth which is more supportive of the wider society and local community, environment, politics and values we cherish as a nation.
In conclusion, moving forward, the true ultimate stage that will determine Zimbabwe’s progression forward is this coming election. It is to show the world that this is the new moment because if anything bad happens in this election, then it is over. In the 1980s, Zimbabwe was a good country and we had investors from all over, but afterwards, they all left, but I can tell you that they can come back.
-Dr Bongani Ngwenya is based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow and can be contacted on [email protected]
