If you are in the 30-plus age bracket, chances are, you will not see Zimbabwe rise again in your lifetime.
Now before you accuse me of being an unfeeling pessimist, I am not by any means suggesting that Zimbabwe will never recover. I am merely asserting that a return to the former glory days is unlikely to be breathtakingly swift.
All indications are the journey to recovery will be painstakingly slow.
This is because Zimbabwe suffered one of the worst types of crises a nation can go through — the creeping kind, which like some incurable disease gradually sapped the country of its substance and strength. This creeping crisis has destroyed the spirit of the nation. More fundamentally, the creeping crisis fatally warped the psyche of Zimbabweans who through being subjected to one deprivation after another, became over-accustomed to the ravages of mediocre governance to the point that they lost a sense of outrage in their hearts.
Outrage is often the result of a sudden and tragic upheaval in one’s life. In fact, that sort of outrage is a good thing. At the level of a nation, outrage can inspire new ways of coping, innovation and tremendous progress. One only has to look at Japan, which after the catastrophe of the atom bomb during World War II, went on to rebuild an astonishing economy, which today is a potent player in global trade.
In Africa, the wonderful story of Rwanda’s growth continues to be told as a testament to the provocations of this brand of righteous national outrage. Rwanda is now steadily surging ahead towards a future filled with possibilities, refusing to be chained to a dark and disabling history of genocide.
Like the frog in the pot that barely noticed it was slowly being boiled alive, we now have a Zimbabwe that hasn’t absolutely succumbed to the heat, but has nonetheless become so hopelessly disoriented to the extent that she knows not which way to turn. Even going as far as doing the unthinkable — turning to her former “enemies”, like the IMF, for help.
I for one do not trust the IMF. But more on this in another post. Be that is it may, I nearly fell off my chair when I read the other day that Zimbabwe could ask the IMF for debt forgiveness, an act which in one fell swoop would consign the country to “poor country” status.
Believe me, being rechristened as a “poor country” by the IMF is not act of compassion. On the contrary it is an act of veiled subjugation. The tragic tale of the IMF wreaking social disaster in Zimbabwe and elsewhere is well-documented. As John Perkins observes in his bone-chilling book Confessions of an Economic Hitman, ultimately the countries designated as poor are forced to accept enormous development and reconstruction loans, which cause them to become more indebted than before. Examples of such so-called poor nations are rife and strangely, the victims list, with a few exceptions, is made up exclusively of resource-rich nation states — Angola (diamonds and oil) Chad (oil) DRC (every conceivable mineral under the sun) Sierra Leone (diamonds) Tanzania (gold and diamonds) Niger (uranium, coal, iron ore, tin, etc) Ecuador (oil, timber, etc) Panama (timber, copper, etc) Sudan (oil) etc.
But really, why are such resource-rich nations deemed to be poor? It’s a blinding paradox!
My convictions are that they are only poor on paper. IMF paper that is. I do, however, concede that certain politicians suffer from a dangerous kind of poverty. They lack the spirit of responsible stewardship. They have been known to prefer being corrupted by the corporations that come in to execute IMF-facilitated projects at the expense of their people’s progress.
If Zimbabwe is intent on not falling into this trap she must choose her future wisely. A future as an IMF-designated poor country is too gloomy a prospect to contemplate. Should Zimbabwe by asking for debt forgiveness end up accepting the IMF “poor-country” status, the country risks being saddled with a chronic debt-dependency problem, for which she will pay dearly with blood and tears for generations to come.
Several options remain open to Zimbabwe before she can resort to the desperation of yet another IMF bailout. One option is to leverage her astounding diamond and platinum resources for the benefit of the entire nation (and not just the elite). Leading authorities on the matter suggest that Zim’s Marange diamond fields have the potential to supply a quarter of the world’s diamonds and that the country could rake in as much as $1.2 billion per month if the diamonds are sold under the Kimberley Process.
Above all, Zimbabwe must regain her sense of outrage; the same sense of outrage that compelled ordinary Zimbabwean men and women to fight racial injustice during the guerrilla war and in the process transformed these men and women into towering figures of Africa’s liberation history.
The time has come for Zim’s post-war generation to fight a different type of liberation war; a war against individuals and institutions that would have them enslaved in economic poverty. Zimbabweans have suffered for too long for them to be complicit in prolonging their misery.
For Zimbabweans to see a sustained recovery within the next decade, they must steer clear of IMF prescriptions and harness the political will to halt the blood diamond trade. Otherwise, it could well turn out to be a case of running so hard just to stand still, for the next 50 years.
Why is there no new Zimbabwean liberation movement? It could easily be based here in SA, and it could mobilize incredible international support if it tried. Look what the ANC managed to achieve in the name of democracy.
How is it that the millions of Zimbabweans enjoying relative freedom here in SA can be so passive?
I think the main issue here is that shifts in political consciousness take a long time. The Zimbabwean people do not yet have a sufficiently strong and clear will to be free.
I agree, outrage is a valuable emotion. I hope South Africans can learn from Zimbabwe and retain their sense of outrage, especially at things like the current threat to media freedom. I have seen so many ordinary South Africans supporting the removal of the right of the media to criticise the government. The outrage cannot spread if the media is not allowed to report freely.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/was-todays-poverty-determined-in-1000-b-c/?hp
Regrettably Zimbabwe is doomed to spend a century or more wandering in the wilderness… A brief review of the disturbing outcome of a research project into wealth generation published in the New York Times [see above link] reveals that Zimbabwe was a “lucky’ country that, for aberrant reasons, acquired the trappings of modernity almost by accident after being ‘colonised’ by an inherently unpleasant, but nonetheless industrious collection of superfluous european rejects.
A brief excursion through the history of the former Roswi State will show that a previous similar adventurous excursion in 1560 by Portuguese settlers was ultimately rejected following the battle of Christmas day in 1650 and the Roswi State retired to its slumberous affairs until rudely reawakened during the 19th century by firstly the Ndebele invasion and subsequently ‘bad whitey’… after which growth accelerated.
Now Bob, the resurgent Roswi, has trashed a century of capital accumulation, both material and human, and the world has moved on. The Marengi fields will generate vast wealth for the successors to the Roswi… ZanuPF. As for the people history is a brutal taskmaster: the ‘people’ had their moment and it has gone.
Never mind those over thirty not seeing a renaissance no one alive in Zimbabwe today or elsewhere will see the phoenix rise because, sadly, it never existed in the first place.
Sorry to rain on your parade. It was a beautiful place that deserved better.
“Crisis, what crisis?”. Ask Mbeki, Zuma and the ANC to stop supporting African Dictators and killers like Mugabe and perhaps things will change in Zimbabwe and elsewhre. It is so bad that unless Mugabe and all his supporters are incarcerated, no one will be ‘liberated’. The MDC does not have the support of anyone to start another ‘revolution’ so expect Mugabe and despair to continue for many years to come. “Government of National Unity” – what government of national unity? Zimbabawe remains a Mugabe Dictatorship and, yes things have gotten a bit better with the MDC trying but this is only superficial. What a sad and abominable waste of what once was a great country. Shame on you Mbeki, shame on you ANC and most of all shame on you Mugabe – you have made such a mess. It is not the fault of Colonialism, Slavery, Bush or Blair – it was and is, the fault of Mugabe, greed, stupidity and corruption.
ZANUPF will never relinquish power to the peoples’s mandate. Prior to the formation of the government of national unity, zanupf were forced into this GNU because they could not print money fast enough to sustain their high level of patronage. The GNU has been a Godsend for ZANUPF. It has enabled them to gain full control of the world largest diamond field using their military. They have replenished their war chest. They have strengthened their alliances with global dictatorships and they are ready to dump SADC and the AU and even South Africa to retain power. They only need Mozambique as an ally to gain access to world markets.
That is why Mugabe abuses the west at every opportunity.
In a nutshell, Zimbabwe has been totally and utterly zanufied and unless the MDC changes course, Zimbabwe will remain in zanupf’s dictatorship for decades to come.
Well-written. Will forward a copy to our daily newspapers, particularly from the independent media who seem to be falling each other in trying to convince us that the HIPC status is the panacea for our economic problems.
Pls stop dumping on the IMF. They are what they are; bankers, loaning ‘other people’s money”, which commercial banks place at their disposal. They are the lender of last resort, lending when no one else will. They impose stringent conditions to loans, just as any other lender would. They must recover their money, so that the lender doesn’t go under.
It is no nefarious plot. If you borrow money, you must repay it.
And by the way…Rwanda is no success story, phoenix rising from the ashes; after the initial outburst of hope, the true African governance model is also rising; democratic opposition is being muzzled, the free press is being muzzled.
Ah yes, African Liberation. Ya Gotta Love It.
The tragedy about Zim is that the current state has left it at the mercy of a multiple colonial forces including the Libyans who still want their money for their oil, The british whose companies were invested in Zim, the american who will protect their corporates wherever they are, the South Africans who mediated in bad faith and yet are moving in buying cheap farms and mines. After all this there will never be independence or sovereignity as Zanu claims. Mbeki was never asked to send troops to Zim , the Zim people just wanted him to say that what Zanu was doing was wrong. He inadvertently prolonged this mess and has further thrust the whole region into chaos. Zanu has been advised by the Chinese to destroy everything and start from scratch using your own indigenous methods and innovations. This would apply in 1954 to 1980, but in this modern era. Wither Zim, Wither
The Zim problem seems quite simple to me. If any group of people allows a group of self-serving thugs, the ZANU-PF elite in Zim’s case, to take charge of them and their resources then what has happened and continues to happen in Zim is a given. The country has been and continues to be raped by the ZANU-PF elite. The price of true freedom is eternal vigilance. We in South Africa are on the same slippery slope as Zim we need constant and sustained effort from every organ of civil society in order to prevent it from happening
zim’s tragedy is that as per the author of this article zimbawean’s are looking for any excuse other than the policy of racial hegemony exercised by zanupf.