The Sunday Mail
Rangu Nyamurundira
Is the foreign investor now given privilege over our economy while our indigenous empowerment aspirations become an afterthought?
This two-part series will focus on two issues. The first part will draw attention to concerns over a besieged indigenisation programme while underlining the gap between the ruling Zanu-PF’s ideological objective and the implementation of such an objective in Government.
Concern will be raised over how indigenisation is being pushed into the shadows as Government pursues Zim-Asset and yet Zim-Asset’s vision for “An Empowered Society and a Growing Economy” is only achievable when indigenisation successfully establishes an empowered indigenous society.
The second part will underscore that empowered societies — such as those empowered via community trusts — can be capacitated to effectively participate in the economy as local investors contributing to the growth and sustainability of an indigenous economy.
But first, dear reader, there has been interesting feedback to my article “You will know whose Zanu-PF it is”, which was published in The Sunday Mail edition of March 15, 2015.
May it be noted for the record that my inclination is and remains towards Zanu-PF’s ideology and objectives, endorsed by more than two million of our majority as at July 31, 2013.
We must never be apologetic.
Most certainly, support for the party’s ideological objectives for total independence cannot be construed as endorsement of those entrusted to lead such revolution who have along the way been lost to the ideological cause and compromised its implementation.
Our political faith is that the party’s ideology shall prevail such that in preserving its ideological identity and safeguarding the people’s aspirations that resonate with such identity, Zanu-PF shall depose of elements within it that may compromise its revolutionary ideological objectives. My criticism of the Mutasa/Gumbo litigious option as ill-advised given the political realm within which their fates lie is certainly not weighed by any factional sympathies. That one must think otherwise affirms the cancerous mindset that has eaten at the heart of the party’s ideological objectives.
Zanu-PF’s handicap — despite its July 31, 2013 popular endorsement — is that some in its rank and file have undermined or doubted the ideological objectives of the party. The corrective 6th National People’s Congress was a reflection of and reaction to the ideological standoff and fracture in the party. We — the two million plus majority indigenous shareholders that gave Zanu-PF its mandate in Government to achieve an indigenous economy — must ask frankly whether our Zanu-PF Government post our July 31, 2013 endorsement defers indigenisation and economic empowerment.
Our concerns are best reflected in Zanu-PF’s 6th National People’s Congress, which expressed concern over the “loss of momentum and initiative in the implementation of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Framework which was the lynch-pin of the party’s 2013 election manifesto”.
To our naked political eye, indigenisation and economic empowerment wanes under the watch of our Government lured by enticing foreign investor capital. Is the foreign investor now given privilege over our economy while our indigenous empowerment aspirations become an afterthought?
FDI is without doubt invited and most welcome. The issue, which cannot be brushed aside in the name of promoting foreign investment is whether re-engaging foreign investors must cause Zanu-PF to compromise and lose its ideological identity.
Must Zanu-PF now defer the economic aspirations of the people to appease foreign investors whom we never chased away in the first place, but were recalled and kept away by their Western governments’ malicious propaganda and sanctions against a Zimbabwe simply seeking to empower indigenous societies?
President Mugabe stated in an interview at the Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction that “Western countries didn’t want to deal with us. Its only now that they are coming forward, but we won’t go down and kneel”.
Does the Zanu-PF Government echo such a principled stand or does it throw caution to the wind? If so, the ruling party is in danger of losing its ideological footprint with which it has walked with the people in our endeavour for total independence?
We must be wary of the far-reaching extent of calls by re-engaging Western governments and international financial institutions that Zimbabwe must “clarify” indigenisation. Before we fall over ourselves to give “clarity”, do we understand what it is that needs to be “clarified” if anything at all? Do we appreciate the difference between the “principle” of indigenisation on the one hand and the administrative framework of the programme on the other?
What is it that is not clear about the principle of at least 51 percent of our economy being owned and controlled by indigenous Zimbabweans? Do foreign investors not understand this self-explanatory principle as they re-engage Zimbabwe? Has it not been our own mixed and conflicting signals on the implementation framework that have caused some investors to resist and ignore compliance believing that indigenisation is deferred, limping and unattended, all to a silent death? Sadly, our own Government gives such an impression when it disregards institutional memory and gains made by the Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment over the past five years of structuring an indigenisation framework and enforcing compliance with the programme.
Government now seeks to pursue a “line ministry” framework in the name of “clarity”.
And yet this new fragmented framework is not bound to ensure continuity in a programme with five years of precedence. Foreign investors who had their plans already approved are given latitude to apply to “line ministries” to consider reversing such approved plans.
Is it not what it is then: Indigenisation being deferred? Are we not witnessing the undermining of Zanu-PF’s ideological objectives, and disregard for the party’s call for the reinvigoration of indigenisation. A flawed implementation framework will only undermine and discredit the principle, giving credence to those with machinations for the programme to be done away with. We cause disillusionment among the people while giving foreign investors a false sense of comfort. The truth investors must be told is that their investment shall be secured by an empowered indigenous society controlling and participating in their economy while engaging and trading with the world.
What then shall be the cost to our ruling Zanu-PF risking any deferment of indigenisation? Firstly, a political cost to its ideological objective for total independence, which binds the people to Zanu-PF?
Secondly, what shall be the cost of any deferment of indigenisation to successfully achieving sustainable social-economic transformation under Zim-Asset.
Does Government appreciate the umbilical cord between achieving socio-economic transformation and successfully implementing indigenisation?
One cannot claim to be promoting Zim-Asset when one prioritises foreign investment at the expense of advancing empowerment of the majority indigenous society when deferring indigenisation amounts to shooting at the heart of Zim-Asset’s vision for “An Empowered Society and a Growing Economy”.
Zim-Asset clearly states that it shall consolidate the gains brought about by the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Programme, which has empowered communities, including through community share ownership trusts and employee share ownership schemes, among others.
Ultimately, deferring indigenisation will disable Zim-Asset’s endeavour for “an empowered society”, which indigenous society it has calculated to guarantee “a growing economy”.
Our Zanu-PF Government must be alive to this critical moment in our nation’s revolutionary socio-economic transformation agenda following the July 31, 2013 popular endorsement and the corrective 6th National People’s Congress that reasserted the ruling party’s ideological objectives. It is 2015, and the regime change wolves – both domestic and foreign – that view Zanu-PF’s pro-people transformative policies a “continuing threat” are regrouping for their prowl, to pounce in 2018.
This is not the moment for Zanu-PF to capitulate its ideology and revolutionary objectives for quick short-term economic gains from the re-engaging West, void of our aspiration for an empowered indigenous society.
This is the moment to reassure indigenisation, reinvigorating it through framework clarity and consolidation, and not fragmentation.
Our Zanu-PF Government must communicate a clear and consistent indigenisation programme that must compliment the effective implementation of Zim-Asset.
It is only an empowered indigenous society that shall establish and guarantee a prosperous indigenous economy in which foreign investor capital is guaranteed security and healthy return on such investment.
Rangu Nyamurundira is a lawyer and member of the Zimbabwe Youth Council Board. His views are his own and do not reflect or represent the views of institutions he is associated with
