POLITICAL EDITOR: Country can never be prodigal son

09 Nov, 2014 - 06:11 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Last week Chris Chenga, in his incisive weekly column, Open Economy, tackled a very important topic on the role of different stakeholders in resolving Zimbabwe’s economic challenges. In that contribution, Chenga focused in particular on politicians against intellectuals or technocrats.

Ithought I should add to Chenga’s contribution, hopefully without over-stretching his thesis, which was, in short, that politicians should mainly formulate national policy and then technocrats be left to deal with the technical details and implementation.

His argument is that it is a “mismatch of skills” to leave politicians to implement Government policy. He cites in particular the implementation of Zim-Asset which he feels has been stalled because politicians simply don’t know how to implement it.

To a great degree, I agree with Chenga’s analysis. The difference is that my conclusion won’t leave our technocrats or intellectuals smelling like roses either.

The politician

If Chenga’s point about a “skills mismatch” were true that politicians “sit on economic issues”, it would be a serious indictment on the nature of our politics; that it only attracts people without technical skills. Not quite true though.

But I have to concede to a certain degree, our politicians don’t seem to take our professionals as seriously as they should on issues of national development. This seems to be a major problem in Africa in general. Technical competency tends to come second to party loyalty. Thus rarely do we find governments concerning themselves with establishing or funding think-tanks which critique national policy as insiders, not simply as bystanders.

The same malady afflicts industry. The prevalent thinking is that the respectable thing is to be politically neutral. There is little appetite to be directly involved to help policymakers, even when those policies have a decisive impact on business. Those who get directly involved are derided as party apparitchiks singing for their supper.

When such people later use their inside knowledge of the system to win tenders, this is called corruption or alternatively the politicians are accused of patronage.

Yet I feel it should be the duty of industry to establish funds which promote research on national development policies. This task cannot be left solely to political parties whose pronouncements are often informed by the immediate desire to win elections which is why most of them fail to implement some of the promises made during the electioneering period.

In a nutshell, there is a need for a change of culture, a need for a new relationship between politicians and intellectuals. The same applies to industry. If industry purports to be the engine of economic development, captains of industry cannot afford to stand aside waiting to be consulted as if they were foreign consultants; and when they are asked by foreigners about investment conditions they wring their hands because they are not conversant with it.

If government policy needs modification, that pressure should come from industry in the very early stages of formulation. That can only be done by people who are directly involved, not those who carry the voice of critics. By the time potential foreign investors make inquiries, government, industry, intellectuals and party activists should be speaking with one voice on national priorities, the opportunities available and the relevant laws. It is a national assignment for everyone.

Yet there is a tendency in Africa to place a concrete wall between practitioners of politics and those who should implement policies. Politics should not be a closed-door party issue but the expression of a shared national vision which should outlive individual politicians.

Most developed economies show that there is close interaction between government, industry and intellectuals. Political parties have a core of intellectual ideologues who sell the party agenda and ensure that it is understood.

They are able to defend government policy from an informed position, not simply because the party requires them to do so.

Intellectuals

Socrates I think it is who is credited with the warning that those who think they are too smart to get their hands dirty doing politics are fated to be ruled by fools, or at least the decisions of idiots. Chenga believes intellectuals or technocrats are being unfairly denied their “space” by ignorant politicians and so are unable to deploy their intellectual capital to the important task of economic development. They are not accorded due recognition.

It is a charitable view which I don’t share. First, our intellectuals or technocrats are innocent. They are the most politically conscious people and make very political decisions in national politics. Most of them are products of the neoliberal school of thought, particularly western scholarship.

The result is that they will not support anything which seeks to challenge neoliberal modes of thinking. They will not want to be associated with radical policies such as the land reform or indigenisation and black economic empowerment.

On such issues, colonial law trashes historical necessity and principles of social justice. They would rather stand on the side of the law, the same law which give blacks second class citizen status in their own country. Often, this is when they part ways with the politician, and retreat into industry, the private sector or the universities.

In Zimbabwe’s case, the NGO sector had until lately become one of the biggest employers of these “politically alienated” individuals who can’t fit in the politics of “racial dispossession”.

The result is that the country has more political critics than actors; those willing to implement policy, to guide, advise, fine-tune and make a success of the crude project initiated by politicians.

Second, our intellectuals or technocrats fall short ideationally. As a result of their education, they cannot come up with ideas of their own about how things can be done differently. The standard reaction to any radical policy is that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. (Every country can invent its own wheel.) Why try to alter the nature of property relations as entrenched over years of colonial rule. You should simply find where you can fit in; don’t upset the system. Independence is no more than tokenism.

Third and closely related to the above, having no ideas of their own, the best they can do is to defend every neoliberal theory and attack anybody who challenges what they have read and studied in the universities. They become the unthinking enforcers of the code, the received western wisdom which must abide forever. Thus every other thought process is met with “it can’t”.

They are unwilling to try what is not in the book. When the policy fails because the politician lacks technical refinement, the intellectual beats his chest as a veritable prophet who knew beforehand the policy would not work. He is not a saboteur.

There is an even greater risk of sabotage when government tries to force nonbelievers to implement its policies simply because they are technocrats. The technocrat should first of all believe and be involved in the undertaking. He must accept and internalise the philosophy behind the policy. Faith and the desire to succeed will generate the positive energy to achieve success more than the received logic.

John Middleton and Bob Gorzynski point out a paradox in their “Strategy Express”. They observe that often strategies which succeed appear contradictory or absurd at first sight. They point out that “good” strategies often challenge preconceived ideas of the world, or what we consider reasonable or possible. That applies to radical policy, to revolutionary undertakings.

Thus if the intellectuals are reluctant to venture into policy unknowns which challenge preconceived notions of the world, it is risky business to engage them to implement government policy. I don’t believe the notion that technocrats are knights in shining armour who should have “space created for them” as if they were doing their country a favour. Everyone should take it as their duty to make a success of their country. Politicians, just like their political parties, come and go, but every citizen has a duty to envision a better future for their offspring in their motherland, not as émigrés in foreign lands.

I felt Chenga’s article ran the risk of leaving our intellectuals, academics, experts, technocrats and technicians and scholars, all feeling smug about themselves. That to me would be very unfortunate. Which is why I conclude this critique with Kennedy’s high-minded exhortation: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

I can’t understand the hubris which induces one to believe their nation must look for them for its salvation! Your country can never be the prodigal son.

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