The Sunday Mail
Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa last week told a Zimbabwe-IMF relations breakfast meeting convened by The Herald Business in Harare that the country was open to business engagement with all.
“In the interest of the country, we should look everywhere in order to move forward. That means we should look to the East, to the West, to the North and to the South,” said Chinamasa.
“There should be no area we say we are not looking at to exploit opportunities for our country.”
This was taken as a policy modification in some circles. It was treated as new and, therefore, news; which it is not because this is not the first time the minister has declared to the whole world that Zimbabwe is open for business.
It is like his position regarding the return of the Zimbabwe dollar. He has been steadfast that it is not coming back any time soon, or at least until the country has “sufficient” reserves to hedge currency value. Soon after being sworn in as Finance Minister last year, Chinamasa on November 15, 2013 met ambassadors accredited to Zimbabwe to explain the country’s economic blueprint, ZimAsset.
He said Zimbabwe was “open to investment even from countries that have imposed illegal economic sanctions” on us.
He said sanctioning countries should put aside political differences because, “Zimbabwe stands ready to allow our economies to talk to each other . . . and we hope that the lifting of sanctions will be sooner rather than later, but before the lifting of sanctions let us start the groundwork for economies to talk to each other.”
He repeated the same appeal twice in May 2014.
It is doubtful that Chinamasa was a lone ranger out of step with general Government policy.
In fact, it cannot even be a matter for conjecture because the purpose of that meeting with the ambassadors was to sell ZimAsset and Zimbabwe. It was an appeal for investment, which he estimated at US$27 billion.
It is thus strange that a myth is being perpetuated that Zimbabwe is not getting enough FDI because its Look East policy is a purely ideological decision when the truth is known that this was in reaction to the imposition of sanctions by the West who were angered by the country’s radical land ownership policies.
It is the same countries which have remained stuck in the past, frustrated that their regime change agenda has not succeeded, and their Trojan horse was badly wounded in the President’s race on July 31, 2013.
Their strategy for re-engagement is in tatters after their lost 15 years, hence the tired and insipid refrain about lack of policy clarity.
Meanwhile, companies in their countries have become impatient and frustrated that the Russians and Chinese are catching all the fat worms while they are trapped in the ideological hypocrisy of their governments.
Who takes seriously any talk of Zimbabwe human rights violations by America or Britain in the wake of genocidal interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Tunisia, Ukraine, Syria, and now back in Iraq, though without “boots on the ground”?
Their trail of blood is there in Gaza.
The American Congress even had the heartlessness to extend more ammunition to Israel to slaughter more unarmed Palestinian men, women and children, all of whom we are told are “terrorists”.
Of course, if the US and Britain want to perpetuate the illusion that they imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe to protest human rights violations, it is their pleasure. If on the other hand taking away the land from a few white commercial farmers who refused to share with indigenous blacks is considered a human rights violation, they must live with it.
Black Zimbabweans who for over a century were deprived of their land and instead provided slave labour on their birthright to the settler white master finally decided to assert their own human rights which had been violated with impunity.
American and British hypocrisy has its local apologists. There is an infantile belief that the “global village” or “international community” starts and ends with America and Britain.
Having placed themselves in this propaganda straitjacket, these apologists want to convince everybody that salvation for Zimbabwe can only come from the West; FDI can only be meaningful if it comes from the West; that as a country or continent we can’t do anything without the blessing of the West. It is such demeaning self-contempt that Europeans and Americans must sometimes wonder if colonial stereotypes that the African is a perpetual child, an inferior species of man, were in fact not true!
Pursuant to the same propaganda straitjacket, we are now being told Russian and Chinese investment has “failed” to inject life in the economy.
Instead, the self-deprecating narrative goes, more companies continue to shut down and employees to lose jobs. This is coming from people who most probably have rural backgrounds and know that one doesn’t plant a maize seed today and wake up tomorrow to harvest.
Isn’t that the reason we talk of a cropping season? If they don’t know, at least they can ask farmers.
It is therefore shocking that somebody wants to be taken seriously when they claim they want street demonstrations because infrastructure development deals signed between Russia and China on the one hand and Zimbabwe on the other only two weeks ago, have not produced 2,2 million jobs!
Is it being suggested by a sane person that American FDI would have dualised the Beitbridge-Masvingo-Harare highway in two weeks?
Would investment from Britain have completed the platinum project in Darwendale in two weeks? What does one expect to see from the Kariba hydropower expansion project in just two weeks?
Looks like we shall witness more voodoo political economics before common sense can prevail.
For his part, Minister Chinamasa will need to tread carefully. There are obvious pressures to create panic and chaos.
He is being pushed to throw all caution to the wind and sign deals with the West which he very well may live – or die – to regret.
Efforts will be made to circumvent Government’s indigenisation and economic empowerment policies. The West would want to jump in on its own terms, ride on the infrastructure built by the Russians and Chinese, and still claim they rescued Zimbabwe.
Some of the tactics are not so subtle, though. Take Belgium. In March this year, one Ari Epstein, CEO of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, visited Zimbabwe. He attended a seminar for local MPs on ZimAsset. He sounded all well-meaning.
He told the MPs: “Results from the tenders (of Marange diamonds) held in Antwerp have demonstrated the immense buying power and benefits the world’s leading diamond trading platform has to offer. Performance zoomed past expectations as, on average, the sales in Antwerp generated prices that were 30 percent above the producing companies’ expectations and an astonishing 50 to 60 percent higher than prices fetched in Zimbabwe and other diamond centres.”
The MPs were taken in and, I believe, so were the executives from the diamond mining firms who must have sat there mesmerised at tantalising prospects.
Epstein was on a roll: “If all sales were to go through Antwerp, Zimbabwe would gain more than US$400 million in extra revenues, resulting in an increase of US$60 million of royalties per year. Naturally, the total sum of money flowing back to Treasury would be exponential of this figure.”
Those who knew must have seen through these sleazy presentations; that they were intended to counter the challenge posed by the Dubai, Surat and Shanghai options.
Second, the benefits for Europe would be reduced if diamond auctions were held in Zimbabwe. Sorting and processing diamonds employs around 34 000 people in Antwerp. That’s what Epstein was defending, not the benefits for Zimbabwe.
Fast forward to September 2014.
Zimbabwe listened to Prophet Epstein and is back in Antwerp for the magical revenues, after ignoring advice in March to auction locally.
And what happens? Some South African company by the name Amari Platinum Holdings grabs US$45 million worth of Zimbabwe diamonds under Epstein’s nose and we have to engage their expensive lawyers to assert our rights!
Before we can say “Mbuya Nehanda”, 12 white former commercial farmers pounce, claiming the same diamonds for themselves as compensation for whatever.
America’s OFAC is also watching.
The message for Minister Chinamasa should be clear: let’s look East, West, North and South for investors, but with our eyes fully open.
There will be no miracle economic recovery simply because the West has joined the bandwagon.
There is nothing wrong with giving favours to those who are prepared to take the risk in our greatest hour of need.
Joram Nyathi is the Zimpapers Group Political Editor. He can be reached at [email protected]
