What is Zimbabwe's future?

What is Zimbabwe's future?

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By Davy Saruchera

"What is the difference between the Zimbabwean and the American elections?"

The question made me sit up because I wasn't really listening to this guy, until now. It was a room full of learned people. I felt the urge to blurt out something, but I did not. I was probably the most junior person in this room, in every way except height. But being a Zimbabwean, I had somehow managed to invite myself in. Well; the food was free, and ummm …. .the drinks too!

I should hasten to say here that the real reason why I kept quiet for a while is because of a learnt lesson. You see, I had this Mathematics teacher who once told me, after realising my lack of enthusiasm in his classes, that Mathematics was not as bad as I thought. It was far worse.

"Small boy, in Maths, it is more important to understand the question than to know the answer,” he would say.

Now, of course such wisdom is quickly lost to a sixteen year old trying to pass his Ordinary Level exams and leave boarding school, but I was to use this priceless knowledge much later in life. I need also point out that I did pass my O’ Level Maths.

When you understand the problem, you are likely to come up with an effective and sustainable solution, because you can attack the source of it and possibly prevent it from happening again.

Let me explain. If you are the central bank chief and you think the problem of inflation is caused by too much money in people's hands, your solution is to limit cash withdrawals.

If you are a leader of a revolution and the problem is landholding, your solution is to grab it from those who have too much of it and give it to those who have not. And when you are in charge of commerce in a village and you have a problem of high prices, you think the solution is to introduce price controls.

As I said, it is important to understand the problem than to know the solution. Because when you are called to arbitrate by two quarrelling headman, and you believe the problem is simply power, you will propose a power sharing scenario and call it a village of national unity.

I won't ask anyone if all the above solutions solved the problem, because you have the answers already.

By the time I blurted my answer, the professor was surprised. See, so many eminent gentlemen in the room had said all the bluff about minorities coming to power and so on. The professor was talking about Africa and its perpetual poverty, so he gave Zimbabwe as an example. The problem, he repeated, is that elections in Zimbabwe, like anywhere else in Africa, are about the past, in America they are about the future!

In Africa, someone should hold a certain office because of what they did in the past. Agricultural policies and education syllabi are all about the past. Contrary, young white Americans see a future in a black man – Obama, and they are voting for him.

They have seen how their grandfathers made enemies in the Middle East and how their brothers were maimed in sham wars, and they are saying ENOUGH! He is promising the future they want.

I am not denigrating history here. We should all know where we came from, but when the past is more important than the future, we may as well give up.

Someone said the problem with Africa is that the liberation struggles took all the energy and focus out of us, such that we had no future plan after winning them. We are still celebrating independence. I agree with him.

An old woman asked us when this independence thing is going to be over so her sons can go to the white man's house and get jobs and feed the children. It made me cringe!

If I may ask, who said we are independent anyway? You see, even imperialism was planned by men who wanted a certain future. The US was dreamed up by five men, who met behind closed doors and decided to conquer the world, not the Hitler way, but economically. It was a hundred-plus year plan and they achieved it.

In South Africa, five men decided to end the Afrikaner vs English mentality and build a supreme white race that would enjoy all the riches of the country and exclude blacks. They called it apartheid, and put the best man for the job upfront.

Prime Minister Malan made a less than fifteen minute inaugural speech in 1948, the shortest ever by a head of state, in which he basically said South Africa is for whites – they achieved it in less than a decade. It's called planning.

This is actually ridiculous, but the then new president of Ghana, Kwameh Nkrumah, paid a state visit to Malaysia and was shocked by the extent of poverty he found. On arrival back in Accra, he dispatched aid to Malaysia! The reverse now happens.

In Zimbabwe we have a squabble for cabinet positions after a landmark power sharing agreement. The fight has nothing to do with the future, it's because everybody wants to be a minister now, even those who have been ministers for 28 years and have nothing to show for it.

We have elections in 2013, if the talks deal stands. Everyone between 18 and 33 then, a large chunk of the population if you consider our life expectancy, will be born frees. Can we go to elections preaching how bad colonialism was? Sovereignty?

If you want to test how disinterested this generation is in history, just approach a group and introduce chimurenga as a topic and see the response you get. Swiftly change the subject and talk about an upcoming Aids cure. See the difference for yourself.

We may hate colonialism, but the question is – what have we learnt from it? Nelson Mandela may have wanted to banish his jailers to the sea, but he knew they feed the other 44 million people in the country. So instead, he made them mentors for the black emerging farmers.

Ian Smith was bad, but what did we learn from him? This is the sanctions-busting master who ruled Rhodesia and even ended up manufacturing military hardware in Harare! Our future lies in such innovation and competence as a nation. It does not lie simply in land reform, but in agrarian reform. It lies in accepting the information age we live in. Today I can take a picture with my cell phone in rural Binga and send it to CNN in five seconds, yet we still have leaders who think by banning a newspaper you can control information. The mind boggles.

Elections are about the future, about change, yet we seem to think they are about what happened in 1975. This is why Morgan Tsvangirai, an ordinary labour activist, was made a world hero by Zanu PF. I still argue that if Zanu PF had treated Tsvangirai the way they treat Mai Madangura, Langton Towungana or Daniel Shumba, he would not be known much outside SADC. But we found a whole government devoting all its free time to the radio, TV, newspapers and rallies to denigrating one man. The effect was instantaneous. People who don't even know where Zimbabwe is on the map know Tsvangirai.

So what should we be talking about? What really is the problem question in Zimbabwe? Some think its dictatorship, others think its sanctions, and economists think it's our bush economics, my granny thinks it's simply because we chased away the white men. I think we have not conceived the future we need. But we should understand the question before we know the answer. Is our future land? Is it foreign investment? Is it jobs? Every generation has to decide its destiny. Let us decide ours, but our future should be informed by common sense.

Barbarism might have worked for colonialism, today it does not. Beat up the opposition and the world cries foul, we have institutions we are signatory to, Smith did not. Stupidity may have saved the day in 1945, these days it scares away investors. A control economy bought time for Hitler, but today before you finish announcing it, qualified people will be holding one-way tickets to countries where their skills are appreciated. It's our health and education that suffers.

We should try to understand our questions before throwing half backed answers at them. We have enough land for serious farmers in Zimbabwe, as long as we don't use it as weekend braai spots. We have enough mineral wealth, as long as it is managed for the state, not for individuals. We have enough foreign currency, as long as it is in the formal financial channels. Ireland for example, gets 60% of their foreign currency from its diasporans, what should we do with ours?

People, we fought colonialism, that part is over; let’s decide now how to use our independence. The choice is ours, to use it for hate journalism, to use it for printing money or for controlling prices. Nowhere in the world has a command economy ever worked. Our future has to be informed by world realities. Where are our interests?

I am reminded of a delegation of black student leaders who were given audience at the White House in the 1970s. They had gone to complain about America being friends with apartheid South Africa. The response they got shocked them: "We know your problem better than you do. Don't worry, when Mandela and his friends are in power, they will be our friends too!”

The hot blooded youths did not understand this, so it was made clear to them: "Kids, we are Americans, we don't have friends, we have interests.” Maybe we should begin thinking the same way.

In Zimbabwe, if you take your time to listen to people, you will realise that we live in a society where two perceptive worlds exist in our minds. World A: The current regime is still the all powerful movement revered by people in 1980. Sanctions are the root of our problems. Land reform was a success (because they have farms) and the world can go to hell. They will be in power forever and its business as usual. Anyone who disagrees is a sell-out sent by the British.

World B: Current corrupt and dictatorial leaders are the root of our problems. They are self serving and arrogant power mongers who use liberation and land as an excuse to delay democracy. They have been stealing elections since 2000. They live in luxury while we suffer. We can only go forward if they are removed. Then we can have jobs, better health, food and a functional economy.

I am not sure which, if any, of these two perceptive worlds is nearer to reality. But what is instructive here is to understand that our future is being invested in the hope of these two parallel mindsets working together. If this is what we believe our future is, then I suppose I have better odds gambling at the lotto. It brings us nowhere near understanding our question.

Our question, in my considered opinion, is: What is our future? I have only been attempting to understand it in this piece. Can we help each other understand this question before we talk about the solution? Perhaps somebody knows about a 100-year Zimbabwean plan gathering dust somewhere?

I heard some new and interesting things from the three politicians at the signing ceremony of the power sharing agreement. Disappointingly, all the new things said were not interesting and the interesting things said were not new. Maybe we should wait for a minute longer and see. But this kind of waiting is painful. As they say, the true length of a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you are standing! I am wetting myself. What is our future? I don't know yet, do you?

"Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party" Barack Obama

Davy Saruchera is an ordinary Zimbabwean citizen from Nyanga. He can be contacted at sarches@writeme.com

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