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Is Zimbabwe a failed State?
By Nilu
Ndlovu
ZIMBABWE is
due to turn twenty six in April with one leader and one party that has
monopolised the political space.
When the country was born, there was much optimism that the country was going to work for its people and the people were going to work to build a new Zimbabwe not blinded by the past but challenged by the future.
If a person who died on 17 April 1980 was reincarnated today, what would he/she say about the state Zimbabwe?
Is Zimbabwe a failed state to the extent we can define the institutional, infrastructural and human capacity framework that characterizes failed states?
A number of questions come to the fore in assessing the economic and political health of Zimbabwe. Is Zanu PF responsible for the failure of Zimbabwe to live up to the expectations of its citizens? Are Zimbabweans necessarily blind to human induced failures? Has the opposition become Zanufied and hence the failure to develop a strategy to respond to the Zimbabwean dilemma? To what extent do Zimbabweans understand the nature and depth of the Zimbabwean crisis? Who is corrupt in Zimbabwe? It is the latter question that I believe is a missing link in our analysis of the contemporary developments in Zimbabwe.
Some people have observed that Zanu PF is not a party without the State. In other words, if Zanu PF did not have the control of the State, it would wither as a party. If this was not the case, it would be difficult to comprehend how an outsider like Jonathan Moyo almost single handedly took control of the State while the party looked helpless.
When Gideon Gono took over as Reserve Bank governor, he also ran away with the baton and the party is also helpless. The party has not been able to build an institutional framework that is informed by real national interests but has left individuals to manipulate the State for their own selfish needs. To this end, Mugabe would have been fired if he was a CEO of a company called Zanu PF for failure to perform and yet the members of the company have not been able to make him accountable.
The party’s business interests have never performed and, if anything, Mugabe has never trusted blacks to be in charge. Instead people like Rautenbach, Glynn and Victor Cohen, Bredenkamp, Roger de Sar, Zed Koudinaris, Tony Kates, Joshi btother, Adam, etc have been entrusted by the party to benefit from its business ventures. In fact, Mugabe did not care about the economic health of his own party but was and is more concerned about remaining in power.
The Kenyan scenario that is fast destroying the Kibaki regime has not played itself into the Zimbabwean crisis largely because Zanu PF has managed to Zanufy its opponents to the extent that the difference may be the same. The opposition parties have not been able to define to the people of Zimbabwe what the agenda for change is. They all seem preoccupied with taking over State control. Gono and Mugabe have already publicly privatised the State with the apparent blessing of the IMF and yet the people of Zimbabwe like Zanu PF members have not seen through the strategy and exposed it.
To what extent is the failure of Zimbabwe a result of Zanu PF policies and programs is a critical question that requires analysis. Yes it is true that Zanu PF has imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe and yet the MDC has been blamed for this. How can an opposition party without the means be responsible for bad policies that discourage progress and investment? Zanu PF has externalised its people through wrong policies and yet the blame is elsewhere.
Zanu PF has defied market principles by controlling the price of foreign exchange in an environment that has limited supply of the commodity and yet rational market players have been targeted? Zanu PF has single-handedly created the black market and yet blames Blair and Bush. Zanu PF has externalised black Zimbabwean businesspeople and yet the blame is shifted to the victims. Zanu PF has destroyed the agricultural sector of Zimbabwe and no blame sticks on General Mad(e). If you remove the (e) from the General’s name you get the picture. How did General Mad(e) manage to make Mugabe the most productive and efficient farmer in Zimbabwe to earn him the post of Minister of Agricultural destruction?
The answer lies in what is called zero cost agriculture where ARDA supplies all the inputs and the farmer gets all the revenue. In some case, ARDA even ensure that production from its farms is invoiced from the farms of the Chefs. In all these instances, the opposition is not able to articulate how a party that has cost more suffering for Zimbabweans and put the economy in an intensive care unit, can be trusted to continue punishing its people.
The failure of Zimbabwe may only be in the eyes of the people who are not in Zanu PF. It is fair that we situate ourselves in the minds of Zanu PF to better understand how a failed State in the eyes of the world and the opposition can be changed. Some call it regime change and others call it an environmentally induced change. In Zimbabwe’s case, the environment is conducive for change and yet change catalysts are missing in action.
One should respect the fact that Mugabe has managed to assemble a cabinet of blind intellectuals who individually know that the Emperor is naked and yet continue to cheer him for fear of retribution. Some people have observed that Mugabe ceased to be a President or CEO of Zimbabwe in the late 1980s and is now virtually a King without a Kingdom. As King, he is not concerned about the day to day management of the country and even his party, but has opened the door for his boys to destroy the very institutions that are required for a functional state. The efficiency with which they have built empires while maintaining an anti-corruption stance is remarkable. The RBZ is now the biggest crime investigating unit with the Governor also being the Chief of Police. With a King who got into power with minimum training and modest tastes, the state is no longer what the people of Zimbabwe bargained for.
The future President of Zimbabwe is increasing being determined outside both Zanu PF and MDC. It is important that we analyze critically how a few individuals we can describe as “Mugabe’s Man” have systematically staged a coup de etat in the knowledge that the founding fathers of Zanu PF have no clew about money and how to manage institutions.
It is ironic that the intellectual property of Zanu PF resides in a few old people and yet the beneficiaries of the party’s misguided policies are the very people who during the day are part of the system and at night are villains. However, when the villain is the gatekeeper, the rules change and it is important that we address the question of Zimbabwe’s failure as a state in the context of the case studies of the individuals who are really responsible for masking the true nature of Zanu PF as Zimbabwe’s most potent poison for primitive accumulation.
This primitive accumulation,
if not exposed, poses a significant challenge to the democratisation
process. The new gate keepers will one day use the proceeds from the
current institutionalised corruption to determine the future of the
country and once again I only pray that we will not be as helpless as
Zanu PF members and Zimbabweans in general.
Nilu Ndlovu is a Zimbawean academic based in Canada
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