Price war: Zanu PF at an end

Price war: Zanu PF at an end

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By Prof Jonathan Moyo MP

IF there is a lesson that Elliot Manyika — the Zanu PF national political commissar and minister without portfolio — should learn urgently before going any further with his Zanu PF propaganda against the business community over the government’s ongoing self-defeating war on prices, it is that because propaganda is not a substitute for policy, he should not hold it in his hands for too long lest it starts moving like a deadly snake that can strike him, his party and government to a spectacular political demise.

Manyika hogged the media limelight this week as acting chairman of the Cabinet Taskforce on Price Monitoring and Stabilisation by going berserk and ordering parastatals and "all producers of goods and services" in the national economy to reverse the prices of their products to levels obtaining before June 18 or face arrest.

His order was of course not entirely new as it came hot on the heels of a similar mind-boggling command made last week by Obert Mpofu, the chairman of the Cabinet Taskforce on Price Monitoring and Stabilisation, who is also Industry minister and deputy secretary for national security in the Zanu PF politburo.

Mpofu had taken his cue from President Robert Mugabe who had earlier in the same week shocked Zimbabweans and the international community by threatening to shut down, seize and nationalise companies that did not cut the prices of their products by half, accusing them of seeking illegal regime change.

Whereas Mugabe and Mpofu had targeted private companies last week, Manyika this week raised the stakes even higher by including parastatals and any other producer of goods or services in the national economy whom he threatened with arrest if they did not comply with price reduction orders.

The deployment of Manyika in the senseless price war by the Zanu PF government, to the point of making him acting chairman of the Cabinet Taskforce on Price Monitoring and Stabilisation when he is a political commissar without portfolio in Cabinet, is understandable but most unfortunate.

It is understandable because Zanu PF has since 2000 defined the national crisis only and always in propaganda terms. As national political commissar responsible for the creation and maintenance of Zanu PF grassroots structures at cell, branch, district and provincial levels, Manyika is a natural source and conveyor of that propaganda.

The reason he is minister without portfolio is to enable him to be salaried by taxpayers so as to sit in Cabinet in order to be familiar with the goings-on there on behalf of Zanu PF exclusively for propaganda purposes, which is all that the ruling party is now about. In other words, Manyika is minister without government portfolio because his real portfolio is Zanu PF affairs at the expense of the fiscus.

The price war against the business community, in fact against the national economy, is a Zanu PF affair. This is why it was most unfortunate that the Cabinet Taskforce on Price Monitoring and Stabilisation deployed Manyika and made him its acting chairman empowered to decree that all producers of goods and services in the national economy must slash the prices of their products, without reference to the cost of production, or risk being thrown in jail.

"The government does not need rocket scientists to tell it that its mindless Gestapo approach to pricing will inevitably lead to the complete disappearance of goods and services from the formal market"

PROF JONATHAN MOYO

If the price war was a national affair beyond Zanu PF, then Manyika would not be involved in it to the point of taking centre stage. In the absence of Mpofu, another minister heading an economic ministry, and there are many of them around, would have been made the acting chairman of taskforce. It is notable that the Finance Minister and the governor of the Reserve Bank, who are the principal government voices on the fiscal and monetary management of the national economy, have thus far been silent on the price war.

The same goes for the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Nicholas Goche, who chairs the National Tripartite Forum (TNF) which brings together the government, labour and business all which recently signed a social contract whose main objective was to stabilise prices through negotiation and dialogue.

Interestingly Zanu PF, which is not a member of the TNF, has taken the lead to reduce that much-heralded social contract to worthless paper. What is worse is that the Zanu PF-based Joint Operations Command (JOC), under the chairmanship of the Minister of State for National Security, Didymus Mutasa, has joined the fray to coordinate and lead the price war against the business community.

As a result, Zimbabwe now has a law-and-order approach to the management of the national economy reminiscent of the collapsed command economies in the former eastern European socialist republics. Personnel in the police, national intelligence and the army have been turned overnight into price inspectors with all the usual trappings of corruption and brutality.

It is only a clueless government driven by a desperate political party supported by a corrupt and partisan police, national intelligence and national army that can even entertain the inherently foolish thought that pricing in the national economy of a modern society in the 21st century can be run in an effective, efficient and sustainable way on the basis of commissariat commands and decrees from the likes of Manyika.

By taking the approach it has taken, Zanu PF is confirming to all and sundry that it has come to the end of the road and is now unable to govern without resorting to nonsensical propaganda or resorting to Gestapo tactics. The notion that only such propaganda and tactics can defend Zimbabwe’s sovereignty and consolidate the gains of our hard-won national Independence such as the recovery of our land rights is now utter rubbish which harms the national interest.

Notwithstanding some lingering mistakes which are correctable, the land reform exercise between 2000 and 2004 was rightly justified on the grounds that it was correcting historical injustice precipitated by colonialism. That reasoning cannot be applied to Mugabe’s outrageous threat to seize and monopolise private companies, including those that belong to black Zimbabweans — many who are Zanu PF leaders or members — who are trying to make ends meet under impossible economic conditions caused by bad conduct of national politics.

Surely the government is aware that many companies have closed down resulting in untold job losses and reduced GDP, and that the government itself has failed to assist such companies, simply because of the present sad circumstances of our nation. Against this background, it boggles the mind how the same government imagines that it can take over companies that refuse to slash the prices of their products and manage to keep those companies operational.

It is a fact that the majority of farms that were seized from former white commercial farmers and reallocated either to government institutions or new farmers remain unproductive. It would be catastrophic to replicate that experience across the national economy under the guise of preventing alleged illegal regime change or even under the guise of helping consumers.

The government does not need rocket scientists to tell it that its mindless Gestapo approach to pricing will inevitably lead to the complete disappearance of goods and services from the formal market and that it will not be able to produce those goods and services.

Everyone can see that the government is in a dark hole. But when you are in such a hole, you do not continue to dig. You simply get out of the hole. That is what the Zanu PF government needs to do and do so urgently: it must get out of the dark hole it dug for itself without making any excuses which no longer have any takers besides those who make the excuses.

The hole in question is political. Zimbabwe desperately needs a political settlement as a framework for resolving the economic meltdown that has brought price instability in the national economy. While reasonable people and patriotic Zimbabweans will have different views as to the details of that much needed political settlement, what is obvious is that there is a need for constitutional and leadership change. Without that, there will be no economic reform in Zimbabwe whether there is rain or sunshine.

In the circumstances, Mugabe and the rest of the national leadership must stop playing silly polemical games laced with misplaced revolutionary heroics and start focusing on real areas of reform for our nation to be able to move forward. And there can be no better focus than on the ongoing Sadc-mandated mediation. The details of what to do are in that mediation.

Professor Moyo is a political scientist and MP for Tsholotsho (Indep). This article was originally published in the Zimbabwe Independent
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