The Sunday Mail
As we will be celebrating Africa Day tomorrow, we remember some of the unfortunate issues that this continent has recently faced.
We spent last year fighting Ebola, which was wreaking havoc in a number of nations and this year we also have witnessed some distasteful episodes of xenophobia with kin fighting kin.
As if that was not enough, Boko Haram has been unleashing horrific acts of terror on defenceless souls, with the Chibok girls lingering in the mind.
Happy Africa Day, folks, in advance!
At least we are physically no longer slaves. Gone are the days when Africans used to be shipped in egregious quantum across the oceans by those who now think they can educate our very continent a thing or two about human rights, forgetting or perhaps just being ignorant about why they sing: “Amazing grace.”
No; we are no longer being shipped to the other side of the oceans, except for the large quantities of our natural resources.
These are the new slaves! Sadly, the whole thing now seems legit, and the “slave masters” are apparently not going to ever sing “Amazing grace” on this one.
Neither are we, Africans, seemingly prepared to sing “This time haulume” to those slave masters any time. So, we help them load the new slaves in their titanic ships, for a few pennies, and off they go weeping.
Cry my beloved mama Africa, for the precious resources from your colossal womb are still being wasted away across the oceans — condemning you to a mere resources surrogate of the clever ones. That explains why Africa has for decades been over-relying on commodities to steer economic growth, which is pretty much the same with a cowboy riding a bull at rodeo.
Both cases are not sustainable.
So, we continue being that “dark continent” with abject poverty, disease, hunger, unemployment, you name it, being the order of the day.
This is certainly inevitable for a continent accounting for less than 3 percent of global gross output and less than 1 percent of global manufacturing output; yet being the richest continent on earth, from a natural resources point of view.
All we need to turnaround our fortunes as a continent are capital resources to transform our raw materials, something that we already know and that I won’t dwell much on.
But it appears that the slave masters have picked our secret book.
They have realised that once we cut them loose from the production value chain, by acquiring capital goods, we will leave them in the cold. And it’s already cold in the West. So, they have been trying from the day they picked our secret book to make sure that we remain primary producers, with no manufacturing sector to talk about.
The sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe about a decade-and-half ago, for instance, have made sure the country cannot acquire parts to fix its machines when they break down, machines which were initially bought from Europe.
And the machines continued to break down while also becoming antiquated, up to a point of becoming a liability to the whole manufacturing process, which virtually typifies the status quo in the manufacturing sector.
When some of the players in this sector try to buy new machinery or to trade some of their finished goods, America would make sure that their money is messed around with through their Office for Foreign Assets Control.
More still, America has actually instructed its representatives to multi-lateral funders to oppose any loans or debt pardon to Zimbabwe.
That’s a very easy thing for America to do, since it holds a lion’s share of voting rights in all these multi-lateral institutions. And they don’t have to issue a press statement each time they do the thing. So, money starts to come to Zimbabwe in dribs and drabs, and the secondary sector of production gears down to primary production, conveniently guaranteeing ridiculously priced raw materials to the slave masters.
(If they are not using them right away, they will be strategically stocking them in their bottomless pits to ensure that their great great grandchildren will have jobs in the future — in case we would have become clever then).
Any wonder why manufacturing has not been performing well since the imposition of sanctions; and why, of course, raw materials are an elephant in the living room of our exports?
But the slave masters know that we relentlessly continue to look for foreign investment, one way or the other to try and refurbish our anti-deluvian factories. But they don’t want that. So what do they do?
They create confusion in the comprehension of our otherwise very lucid policies, to mud our investment waters. Once it gets muddy, they leave the adage “the best way to deal with muddy waters is to leave it alone” to fulfil itself.
Our indigenisation policy has been a victim of that trick, suffering all sorts of wild misconstructions, with the help of some local Judas Iscariot incarnates.
To make sure that investment does not flow into the country, international reports such as the Global Competitiveness Index and the Doing Business Report (whose methodologies have at some point been challenged by our then Ministry of Economic Planning and Investment Promotion) are paraded to the world, showing how Zimbabwe is said to lowly rank in these indexes. Poor Zimbabwe!
But I have always argued that Zimbabwe’s economic narrative is not truly captured by these international indexes. The actual “index” that truly captures Zimbabwe’s narrative is a visit to Zimbabwe. Show me one foreign investor who visited Zimbabwe and returned with a bad report!
Seems like they all return with the report of the Biblical Joshua and Caleb, in the majority of cases. All the delegations that recently came to Zimbabwe, Britain and the Netherlands included, have spoken highly of this world of wonders — Zimbabwe.
I will quote the words of Louis Rene Peter Larose, World Bank Group executive director, who was in the country last week and said: “Seeing is believing and I’ve been here. For me, the Zimbabwean economy has great potential and, of course, I’ll be making a strong case for Zimbabwe at the World Bank and all international donor agencies to make sure we bring a total package for Zimbabwe.”
There you have it! My only worry, however, is America’s appointees on these multi-lateral organisations, carrying unequivocal and specific instructions alluded to earlier.
But what we can clearly see here is that the road to Zimbabwe is like the road to Damascus. It is a road of enlightenment. Many who take this road always alter the way they are made to understand Zimbabwe, which is why the tourists who have come here to see some of our world class resorts have in several instances come back to invest, despite having heard about “monsters” called indigenisation policy, fictitious reports of political violence, unfounded human rights abuses, just to pick the bold ones from the catalogue.
To ensure this road is travelled less, haven’t some American-based lobbyists pushed for the suspension of imports of sport hunted elephant trophies from Zimbabwe? Now airliners have also complied with the immense pressure to start declining the transportation of trophies, including those that are not internationally cited as threatened with extinction or are critically endangered.
The less the tourists travelling to Zimbabwe, the less the Damascene encounters and the less the investment from abroad, and manufacturing remains the scrapyard it has been for years.
Against the above background, you and I, as citizens of Africa, have a significant role to play in turning around the fortunes of our country. Here in Zimbabwe, we have a Constitution that calls upon citizens of the country to be loyal to Zimbabwe.
Section 35(4)(d) actually says citizens should, to the best of their ability, “defend Zimbabwe and its sovereignty.”
We have Zimbabwean citizens all over the world, some who are studying and working abroad and some who just visit. We have some in the country who have friends abroad that they constantly get in touch with. Are you defending what Zimbabwe actually stands for as you interface in those spaces?
We should defend our country by not lying about the situation here and by sharing positive messages. If foreigners like James Benoit are telling the world that “now is the time to invest in Zimbabwe”, why should we, the citizens of Zimbabwe, say otherwise?
Why should we lobby for the continued existence of sanctions that are hurting us? Why should we live in ignorance, not knowing the basic facts about our country, to allow us to defend our cause?
I remember a gentleman who was visiting from Australia who I met in some space in the capital who believed that Zimbabwe is still operating in the hyper-inflationary environment, only to later realise, as we interacted, that Zimbabwe actually has the lowest inflation rate in the region.
May this year’s edition of Africa Day not only rekindle the spirit of pan-Africanism and patriotism in you, but also provoke you to realise what is good for Zimbabwe is good for you and what’s bad for her is also bad for you. Rise Africa! Rise Zimbabwe!
