The Sunday Mail
Howdy folks!
There is a popular maxim given to the world by Cde Deng Xiaoping of China. He said, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.”
He said this in response to critics who proffered that his ideas were capitalistic and a departure from Communism.
Some folks have been lately advocating this maxim against the background of the “rising need” for foreign investment in the Republic, and the said depletion in levels of domestic liquidity.
Folks, I have problems with those who do not want to look at what the cat looks like.
I think it is reckless to pay no attention to its colour, either.
I remember a cat that actually brought a giant, live cobra into my mother’s hut back in the countryside, much to our fright.
There was pandemonium as the viper went on a determined prowl.
In the case of Cde Xiaoping; well, he may have “cared less” but in adopting that stance, he was also successfully perpetuating a profit motive culture which compelled people to be selfish.
The market became a jungle where survival was a privilege of the fittest, and inequality also reigned supreme while the undermining of workers’ rights became the order of the day.
I don’t want to pretend as if this great Chinese revolutionary and statesman did not accrue great exploits and set China for a major uplift.
He sure did!
But for every cat we choose to go in bed with, there certainly are consequences that can emerge as a result.
And in our case, we ought to really look at ourselves first before we start to want to gullibly domesticate Cde Xiaoping’s famous saying in our context.
When you look at our behaviour as a continent and as Zimbabwe in particular, you may wonder why we can be so desperate to the extend of wanting just about any cat to redeem us.
You see, last Friday I found myself in a room populated by accountants. It was the Zimbabwe Accountants Conference in Harare.
Folks, while being initiated to become an economist, years back, I was warned that economists and accountants don’t agree on many things, even on simple things such as the definition of costs.
So, I have always been avoiding spaces where accountants meet.
But this one, I couldn’t shy away from — and thank God the conference managed to convince me that the textbooks were exaggerating.
So, my only wish is for the deliberations that took place at that conference to feed into policy.
My mind still linger on the memory of two of the slides presented by Dr John Mangundya on illicit financial flows.
It’s painful to realise that while we look desperate in our relentless quest for FDI, we are also pumping out volumes of money that are almost equal to the quantum we are getting in form of FDI.
Africa, for instance, is pumping out US$50 billion through illicit financial flows.
We find illegal tricks of sending away the money we earn hard in our continent for God knows why.
When you hear that Zimbabwe’s illicit financial outflows totalled US$3 billion between 2009 and 2015, you may be compelled to ask yourself: So, what’s the point of trying to mobilise FDI if we actually have that kind of money locally?
Why do we have to beg foreigners to the point of almost losing all our sovereignty?
You then start to take seriously those who say that we probably have circa US$10 billion circulating in the arteries of our informal economy.
You also start to ponder why we shouldn’t just focus on mobilising Local Direct Investment.
But why are we really sending our monies out of the country? In fact, who is doing that?
That might as well be a discussion for another day.
But, for now, one thing I think we should zoom in on when we look at ourselves as Zimbabweans, especially those in business, is whether they are the kind of cats that the economy really needs.
I have mentioned already that there should be lucid criteria that we should use to examine our cats.
We live in a nation whereby we read about corruption taking place virtually on a daily basis, where our kids perhaps now think that corruption is some popular ice-cream.
We read about business leaders failing to demonstrate leadership — those remunerating themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars per month while other employees are going for months without pay and a whole catalogue of other vices.
We read about corporates who have completely broken their reputations by any measure, yet continuing to be allowed to lead their firms.
These are the very corporates who often hasten to answer when surveys like the 2015 Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries Manufacturing Survey ask about their business confidence.
When they say they are “not confident”, should we not conclude that they are actually implying lack of confidence in themselves, in their ability to turn around the firms they have milked?
Why should business leaders who have lost their entire reputation continue to be trusted to provide transformative leadership?
Employees are human beings, folks, and they won’t support a leader with reputational issues, a boss who has impregnated a high school girl.
Warren Buffet pretty much summed it up: “If you lose money for the firm, I will be understanding; If you lose reputation, I will be ruthless”.
The colour of the cat should always be an issue of particular concern to us, folks.
We cannot sell our souls to the devil because of desperation. We will always be victims or victors of our choices.
The cats that we choose to be part of the who-is-who in the zoo will always determine our destiny.
Later folks!
