The Sunday News
Vincent Gono, Features Editor
THE excitement that gripped the nation following the resignation of former president Mr Robert Mugabe and the ushering in of the new political dispensation captained by President Emmerson Mnangagwa in November last year was not confined to the country’s borders alone.
It became uncontrollably contagious and its echoes were loud and the signals of change very clear. The excitement spilled beyond the country’s seams and was heard far and wide. The international community heard it too and the response was a luminous political and economic response that signified not only an end to a not so glorious era economically that is but pointed to an end to international political and economic isolation that the country had been labouring under for almost two decades.
President Mnangagwa hit the ground running, announcing a raft of measures to resuscitate the tottering fortunes of the national economy that was gasping for air in the intensive care unit. He also refreshed and quickly gave the country’s political culture some stability by removing malcontents from his administration.
Prior to the changes the party — Zanu PF had been hijacked by disgraceful political perverts who were eager to stop at nothing in their morally corrupt crusade to win power at any cost including maligning those who by party structural legitimacy were naturally supposed to take over should there be a vacuum.
Mr Mugabe found himself surrounded by men who had absolutely no aorta of history behind them — the John come-lately and glib intellectual misfits whom he had conscripted into the party and had identified a fissure in the person of former first lady who readily lubricated their ambitions of taking over power.
Their eagerness to get to the pinnacles of political power by hook and crook was breeding a lot of corruption that was stinking high and low thereby bleeding the national economy while the law was becoming too short to reach out to them as they used their proximity to the former first family as a shield to accountability.
The clique had ceased to be accountable to anyone. They had seized the reins of both power and accountability to a point where the social contract between them and the people they purport to represent was for them alone to write. They had become a law unto themselves. As a result the country was ranking very low on the global corruption index and naturally investors were responding by not investing in the country where mendacity and abuse of power seemed legal.
There was no political stability as the ruling party was at sixes and sevens with itself and those that were supposed to provide a semblance of order and direction in the party and Government had been captured and now belonged to a faction that was clearly anti-people, pro-corruption and anti-development.
The coming to power of the new political dispensation provided both political stability and the right tonic for the sprouting of investment opportunities. And President Mnangagwa’s “Zimbabwe is open for business” mantra has won the hearts of many who had known the country as one run by a mafia where foreigners and locals were searched of whatever they had in their purses at the corruptly run several police roadblocks that portrayed the country as one at war.
Investing in the country under the previous political administration was risky. Government ministers and public sector bureaucrats were embarrassingly asking for huge amounts of money as kick backs from investors and no action was taken against them even if the reports were taken to the appointing authority.
Although the economic dangers of corruption, no matter how small, are so many the authorities were turning a blind eye on the vice that was seriously tearing the social fabric as well. According to a 2013 market brief by the African Development Bank, corrupt practices distort markets and stifle economic growth and sustainable development, including robbing countries of critically needed resources.
It reduces efficiency and increases social inequality while capital has a strong tendency of shying away from risky markets where corruption is rampant. The increase of high level cases of corruption in Zimbabwe was therefore repelling foreign direct investment which Zimbabwe so much needed to turn around its economy and as a result certain sectors of the country’s economy became locked from investment.
Corrupt tendencies under the previous political administration had an adverse effect of increasing the cost of doing business in the country, thus frustrating and turning away investors in the process. As a result of damning reports of corruption, the competitiveness of Zimbabwe in attracting foreign direct investment was seriously compromised as foreign investors make use of global corruption indexes before they decide on where to invest.
Zimbabwe has however, been performing obscenely on the global corruption index while the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission had become increasingly ineffective as politics had diluted its efficiency. All that became history as the country moved with the tide of change introduced by President Mnangagwa both politically and economically.
Politically he ended the era of having a president who had become more feared than God and made a return to democracy as evidenced by the number of people who exercised their constitutional rights to seek political office, the promise of a free and fair election and a raft of other issues that were stifling the practice of democracy.
It is however, on the economic front that he has moved milestones. The evidence is there for anyone without political blinkers of hate to see.
He has in a few months of assuming managed to achieve even what the Inclusive Government failed to do in the years it subsisted. Economic reforms under the Inclusive Government were cosmetic, they were more superficial than real and they were blurs to justify a particular order.
President Mnangagwa’s reforms are more real. They are the opposite of the ones that people enjoyed during the Inclusive Government era. The country has lived to witness an investor scramble that was never witnessed in recent years where the European Union, the West, including power houses such as Russia and Britain as well as the US have renewed talks with the country on how to revive the its economy.
And this year’s Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) that ended yesterday cemented the country’s eagerness to open itself for business with Vice-President General Constantino Chiwenga (Retired) affirming the need for the country to quicken the implementation of investment deals signed with foreign firms.
He assured the investors of the Government’s commitment to maintaining credible and consistent policies to foster robust economic growth and development saying the country was not going to entertain economic opportunists but rather serious investors. One foreign exhibitor at the ZITF said investors were always there and ready to invest in the country but the political atmosphere was such that it killed the zeal while the political administration was engrossed in amassing wealth in a decaying economy with little efforts paid in engaging the international community.
“The country was bitterly enjoying its economic isolation and no effort was employed whatsoever in fixing the economy. But the new administration looks serious and has set the red carpet for investment and removed the red tape and bureaucratic bottlenecks including the demand for bribes from investors. That alone is giving the investors a lot of confidence. Previously it was too much talk and little work on the ground and that was not good for the economy,” said an exhibitor who requested anonymity.
He said the country had a lot of economic potential but was all along not open for business and the President’s thrust was going to see the country realising its full economic potential, adding that it was a process and not an event, urging patience and support among Zimbabweans. Since November last year the country has secured investment deals running into billions of dollars with different countries.
