The Sunday Mail
Rangu Nyamurundira
President Mugabe has appointed his two deputies in Zanu-PF and the State: Cdes Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko.
They are the two men who must complement and reflect President Mugabe’s leadership in which Zanu-PF’s aims and objectives and our nation’s indigenous economic aspirations are vested.
Indeed, prior to Zanu-PF’s 6th National People’s Congress, President Mugabe had become a lone uncompromising voice within his presidium, advocating the party’s constitutional objective to “create conditions for economic independence, prosperity and equitable distribution of the wealth of the nation”.
He took every opportunity to remind the people of Zimbabwe and declare to the world, primarily Western economic interests, that Zimbabwe’s absolute sovereignty would only be achieved via indigenous ownership and beneficiation of her natural resources within an indigenous economy.
And yet such an unwavering stand by the Party’s First Secretary, duly elected Head of State and Government, always seemed to fade upon the tongues of members of his former presidium.
Indigenisation caught a chill beyond President Mugabe’s warming and reassuring voice.
Thanks to the “revelations” of a loyal wife sharing his vision, the chills were diagnosed before they became an incurable cancer.
Dr Grace Mugabe – the new Zanu-PF Women’s Affairs Secretary – exposed a former presidium member who pursued her 10 percent tithe from foreign investors and companies, while depriving the broad-based empowerment programme President Mugabe advocated.
Post-July 31, 2013, indigenisation strangely found itself at the mercy of comrades lost to the cause of the people’s economic revolution.
Theirs had become the “unholy alliance” referred to by President Mugabe, that would have had him deposed to leave a Party and State vulnerable and unable to fend off the aggressive and predatory economic appetites of foreign Western economies.
Such betrayals are history now.
A new Presidium sits in commune with Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
It is a political authority that must bear Zimbabwe’s economic aspirations and consistently express such aspirations throughout our economic revolution that is indigenisation.
Sometime in January 2013, then Defence Minister and now Vice-President, Cde Mnangagwa – while unveiling Mimosa’s indigenisation plan – reaffirmed Zimbabwe’s indigenisation programme.
He said: “If there are any people who doubt that the indigenisation law is here to stay, they should think again. It might take us many years to mine our resources if investors move out, but our platinum or diamonds won’t rot. We can always exploit them when we acquire the technology.”
He went on to explain that contrary to allegations that then Indigenisation, Youth Development and Economic Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere was undertaking a personal agenda, the minister was an appointee of Zimbabwe’s political authority and Government, implementing a national programme as passionately as he did.
A year after a decisive electoral mandate to deliver on the people’s indigenous economy, Zanu-PF’s 6th National People’s Congress has had to acknowledge a disturbing “loss of momentum and initiative in the implementation of the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Framework which was the lynchpin of the Party’s 2013 election manifesto”.
Zanu-PF must awake to the reality that the determination of the successful implementation of indigenisation has always been at its sole discretion, having been duly and consistently given the mandate to govern the State on the back of its policy for the equitable distribution of Zimbabwe’s natural resources.
Having won last year’s elections upon such a policy, the Zanu-PF Government has framed and adopted Zim Asset, an economic plan clearly founded upon indigenisation and economic empowerment.
Zim-Asset provides that it will “ride on the opportunities of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Programme”, including funding of public utilities in the communities such as schools, hospitals and other social amenities, thereby improving the standards of living of the populace.
And here is the point to note for the doubting Thomases, revealed and yet to be revealed within Government.
Such a Zim-Asset objective is already being achieved through community trusts many of which have contributed to the construction of schools, clinics and irrigation schemes to the tune of US$14 000 000.
President Mugabe’s indigenisation vision is to achieve broad-based economic empowerment now effectively resulting in local grassroots investors that can, with support and capacity-building, contribute to an “Accelerated Implementation of Zim-Asset”.
Yet, those appointed by President Mugabe to facilitate indigenisation show no faith in this local investor created for them. Instead, they always look up to foreign investors while blaming the very enabling indigenisation programme for keeping away foreign investors who simply stay away because of the contradiction and doubt that had been within the indigenisation programme.
Some of them have waited, hoping indigenisation may be reversed.
Zanu-PF must be true to itself now that its 6th National People’s Congress has called for “the Party and Government to immediately reinvigorate the implementation of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act by enforcing compliance of its provisions”.
Such truth is that the challenge to attracting foreign investors has never been indigenisation; not its principle or as a programme being implemented in Government.
Rather, it has been the conflicted attitude towards indigenisation within Zanu-PF and among its appointees in Government.
On one hand, President Mugabe has championed the economic aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe, yet on the other his Vice-President and her cabal sought personal aggrandisement that led to “unholy alliances” whose success would only have promoted foreign economic interests.
Naturally, foreign investors briefed by their government departments were well aware of such a doubting insecure indigenisation programme, and have sat on the fence watching the internal stand-off play out post July 31, 2013.
The “post-Mugabe Zimbabwe” envisioned by America’s Secretary of State (African Affairs) on the eve of Zanu-PF’s Congress is a Zimbabwe within which American investors could engage a Zanu-PF Government with a critically compromised total independence and indigenisation ideology.
After having feared Zanu-PF’s electoral victory in 2013 which should have caused them to stampede to comply, non-indigenous companies were strangely emboldened.
They had identified with compromised Zanu-PF appointees willing to sell out the economic revolution.
They sensed, like predators do, a limping indigenisation programme and ideological fracture.
Like patient predators, non-indigenous companies and foreign investors waited upon Congress, hoping that Judas would persecute God’s messenger to scatter the indigenous flock for their richer pickings.
For as long as Zanu-PF’s appointees in Government doubt indigenisation only to score quick and unsustainable economic gains, then the otherwise willing foreign investors shall continue to wait, hoping for a dramatic change in policy and, indeed, a repeal of indigenisation.
It is a known strategy in war (against our economic revolution) to starve and weaken our resolve so we open wide Zimbabwe’s bowels to the plunder of our natural resources.
But then, they, too, are desperate for such resources to revive their economies still reeling from recession.
Who will blink first?
Do we need them so much to survive as a sovereign people, as we did before their colonising economic interests?
Can we not, for starters, have our new very local investors – community trusts – invest a fraction of their millions to embark on effective agricultural enterprises designed upon business models that will ensure sustainability of the trusts while beginning to guarantee food security to Zimbabwe?
Zimbabwe’s agriculture-based communities can effectively engage our new indigenising economy using their experience from working the land.
Moreso, their production will cut down importation of basic agricultural produce that has contributed to our budgetary deficit.
The question is: Who among Zanu-PF’s appointees is brave enough to heed President Mugabe’s clarion call and pioneer a brave new Zimbabwe?
Indigenisation lives as declared by “the People’s Congress”, having gamatoxed the weevils that ate at the heart of our economic revolution.
To stay the people’s economic revolution, President Mugabe has placed faith in a new presidium and Cabinet.
We are confident they will not compromise on the people’s indigenous economy.
Only then will foreign investors blink first and begin flooding in.
◆ Rangu Nyamurundira is the acting corporate secretary of the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board (NIEEB). His views are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of NIEEB.
