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Mugabe mortages country to highest bidders
By Tamuka
Chirimambowa
THE much celebrated deal between the Zimbabwe government and Implats
is a slap in the face of any conscious and patriotic Zimbabwean.
Mugabe has masqueraded all along as a champion and defender of the Black and African cause albeit being neither, nor any from the beginning, rather a wolf in sheep’s clothes beginning to fall away.
The deal is an act of economic sabotage and perpetuation of economic imperialism and reversal of the gains of the liberation struggle.
In this article, I will try to shed light on Mugabe’s hypocrisy and betrayal of the people and its implications to coming generations.
It should be noted that this article seeks not to demean Implats but to give voice to an omitted side in the swan-song praise of the ‘Deal’ in question.
The Zimpapers stable and ZBH machinery have all been singing that the emperor’s clothes are silk beautiful yet he is naked.
It should be observed that the deal is nothing anywhere near indigenisation or economic emancipation of Zimbabweans, but just an antithesis of what Mugabe preaches. The deal cedes about 36% of its untapped resources on the Great dyke with an estimated value of US$153 Million, which was outside Implats’ long-term programmes. It is expected that 715 new staff houses will be built, 1200 new direct jobs, and 3000 contractor jobs to be created during the three-year construction period. A very good stunt of hyped statistics but no substance at all as Benjamin D’israel once remarked, “Lies, damn lies, statistics…”
My argument in this article borders on the fact that from the onset, Implats ceded a stake that is not within its long-term plan for the coming 50 years, untapped (ambiguous/not defined) resources. As a point of departure this means a lot of ambiguities cloud this deal that is not explained to the Zimbabwean people. Secondly it should be observed that Mugabe’s call for a 51% stake has had deleterious consequences to the Zimbabwean economy, just at the expense of a cannibalistic public relations exercise to the black community world over that he is the Tarzan or Rambo of the Black man.
Ideologically the deal becomes bankrupt and bereft as shown by its ambiguous terms. Implats claims to have taken a proactive action by ceding a stake yet it clearly knows it is selling a flying bird without wanting to include the gun and pellet in the package.
Indeed, it is a flying bird in the sense that for the government to go for empowerment deals it is because there is the question of huge capital investment required in extracting these minerals and in this case it does not have and so is a majority of its citizens. This means that the government will get untapped resources which they cannot explore and do not have the resources to exploit, so its people as well. In this sense we are just being made to content ourselves in tomfoolery when the bird is in the air and there is nothing to show that it is ours.
Moreso in this case, we do not have the gun and pellet to shoot it down, and the mystery remains, what would happen to the bird? It is clear that Implats has just simply played a technical by-pass of the legislation; for come the end of its 50 year deal, the government would be forced to negotiate for its gun and by then dictate the terms like they have done. This should be taken in the context of horizontal integration of mining capital in Zimbabwe and Implats’ expansionist programmes. The deal also gives Implats a blank cheque to be involved in extractive plunder reminiscent of Portuguese and Belgian colonialism and the slave trade.
Samir Amin and Gunder Frank are quite explicit in their dependency theories, and unfortunately this dependency only serves to anchor a crumbling dictatorship where as for the two it only gave unfair trade to the whole nation. So it is only Zanu PF and Mugabe only that stands to benefit by buying more time in office when everything else is crumbling around them. To understand further the gravity of this expansionist programmes and in whose interest it is carried, one has to look at the Implats’ Investor presentation of June 2006, which states that; “Strives to- i. be the best platinum producing company, and ii. Deliver superior returns to its shareholders”.
Therefore, all the romantic and cosy equity and empowerment philanthropy has never been in Implats’ objectives as espoused in the omission of that objective in the presentation to the shareholders. The inclusion of corporate responsibility and use of empowerment, equity and community development terms are just a semantic gimmick to hoodwink us from seeing reality and asking the national question of economic emancipation. It is clear in the Zimbabwe case that Implats managed to get superior profits for its shareholders and the word superior has to be understood clearly. It means squeezing our economy to the last ounce if not atom of platinum and all this benevolence they preach is nonsense. It then follows in whose interest does Zanu PF mortgage our economy?
Implats and Mugabe go on to quote statistics out of the blue without qualifying what model or formula they used for us to ascertain the veracity of their projections. Moreso the statistics are silent on job or occupational differentiation and the amount of money that this would generate in terms of i. taxes to the fiscus and ii. Earnings to the worker in relation to the poverty datum line. It is assumed that with the creation of the 4 200 jobs (direct and indirect), in a simple reductionism logic, there would be a fall in unemployment and inequalities. I challenge Implats and Mugabe to publish the figures as they are in the company’s projected cash flow in the public interest.
Implats goes on to claim that it will build 750 houses for employees. I have no qualms with this but they omitted the ownership of the houses. It is part of their fixed assets, to enable them to have a ready made pool of workers who can be accessed easily as when necessary to ensure a smooth running of their plunder machinery. There is no charity at all, and if I am wrong then the deal should be published and we will see if there is any clause that is express on workers getting title deeds of the houses in their name. So the statistics in this deal should remind us of the mad man who picked a shining broken bottle of Bohlingers and ran away celebrating thinking it was emerald!
The question that remains unanswered is why people in Zanu PF and Mugabe miss such basic economics expected to be grasped by a junior certificate commerce student? The answer is simple; they are now bankrupt and clueless like a naked witch caught.
They are just running everywhere like headless chickens mortgaging the country will- nilly. This thinking and philosophy is epitomized in Gideon Gono’s words, “Zimbabwe would leverage its minerals to get economic benefits”. It has been already highlighted in this article that there are no benefits at all as they claim.
The Bindura Nickel case is another example, but that would need a whole new article to analyse. Gono should have simply stated that Zanu PF would leverage Zimbabwe’s minerals to stay in power at all costs. This betrayal and continuous mortgaging of the country’s heritage secured through the sacrifice of people like Nikita Mangena, Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole, Lookout Masuku, Josiah Tonngogara, Mbuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguvi and many other gallant sons of Zimbabwe is a reversal of the gains of the liberation struggle.
Mugabe’s lust for power beats even the biblical Ananias and Suphira’s lust for money and even the most harlotous whore’s love for silver and gold. Zimbabwe needs to get rid of Mugabe and the rest of the economic saboteurs before they plunder everything we hold dear.
Mugabe proclaims
that “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again”, yet he is
busy mortgaging it to the Implats and the Chinese.
Tamuka Chirimambowa is a Zimbabwean national living in South Africa
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