WHAT are the most important challenges facing Zimbabwe today? Surely economic challenges are amongst the most important, in particular the high unemployment rate and the low productivity of the agricultural and industrial sectors. Yet it seems little attention is being paid to this critical area. Instead of addressing economic problems directly, our analysis dodges the economic questions.

One response we keep getting is analysing the problems we face as a “security” problem, to be solved through military solutions. This is particularly so at election times.

However, military solutions obviously cannot solve economic problems. Over the last few years, the per capita income has fallen from US$600 per annum to US$360 per annum. Meanwhile the cost of living has increased tremendously. It is not possible to live reasonably on the civil service monthly income of US$150 a month, even though they are getting five times the per capita income.

Shame! What are our solutions?

There is no doubt that the armed forces, that is, the Army, Air Force, CIO, Police and Prison Services, play a very important role in the present and future development of Zimbabwe. The armed forces have played very important roles in the development of countries as diverse as China and the United States, including in many economic fields. In South Korea, the armed forces were the most advanced modern visionaries and implementers, and played a critically important role in the modernisation of its economy. In our near neighbour, Zambia, the armed forces contributed to engineering works such as road building in the 1970s.

In China, the armed forces played an important part in its early agricultural and industrial expansion. With some tens of thousands of people employed in the armed forces, it is time that they contributed to real economic development. Are they capable of handling these exciting challenges? The military played an important role in the liberation struggle. Today they should indeed play a key role as the leaders of the economic revolution. So far they haven’t been able to do so.

Recently we heard that more than 13 000 youths were employed by the Ministry of Youth in 2008. These youths are still in employment, although apparently without the permission of the Public Service Commission, which is legally responsible for the employment of civil servants.

These youths were and are unashamedly partisan, identifying themselves as supporters of Zanu PF, with the responsibility for beating up and removing members of the MDCs from their areas.  I wonder why the Ministry of Youth did not identify agricultural or industrial productivity as the most important challenges facing youth, through which they could have created jobs and wealth for themselves? If the 13 000 youths had managed to grow say three tonnes of food each, they could have grown enough food to feed more than 300 000 people! That would have been a real service to the country.

Unless Zimbabwe faces its economic challenges realistically, we are bound to continue our downward spiral, depending on donors to feed us and to give us development funds. We should be ashamed to be beggars. And getting food aid and donor funds further weakens our agricultural and industrial sectors.    Meanwhile our political leaders are fighting for fancy cars and foreign trips and the government is bloated with more than 30 ministries, and more than 60 ministers.

The government appears to spend more time blocking each other than concentrating on development. We have a golden opportunity to put this country on the path to development, but we see few signs of this.  The opportunity to invest in agriculture and industry was missed in the last budget, and Zimbabwe is heading towards yet another year as a beggar for food.

The last government — that of Zanu PF, tackled the challenge of economic development through printing lots and lots of paper money and imprisoning its critics. This is known as the Mobutu- Amin model of development. Zimbabwean leaders like to boast they are more educated than Mobutu and Amin, but unfortunately this proved to be an empty boast. In addition to reliance on the printing press, we also relied on imprisoning industrial and commercial leaders who broke the price controls. Somehow these tough, very tough, measures did not lead to higher productivity. They did not build the economy. Indeed they directly destroyed the economy.

With the Unity Agreement, the printing of useless money has stopped.  The imprisonment of industrial and commercial leaders has stopped.  Those two steps lead us back to sanity.  But it is clearly not enough.  We still have not faced up to our economic challenges.  We should stop wasting time and money and face up to these challenges.

Steps that need to be taken include the following negatives:
Stop wasting money on luxuries which we cannot afford.  We should realise that our per capita income is now only US$360 per annum, and as a minimum we need to return to our former per capita income of US$600 per annum.  Whilst our Sadc neighbours have managed to increase their per capita income, we have managed to almost halve ours.  The government is wasting a lot of money.  Is it going to waste more?

Stop allowing in foreign manufactures and food by imposing customs duties to support our own farmers and companies.  We must support our own farmers and manufacturers.
Stop the foolish idea that giving “freebies” to political supporters will bring about development.  Zimbabwe has been seriously weakened by this policy of “patronage” through which so-called leaders give “free” things to their followers, whilst followers must remain as obedient beggars.  The RBZ apparently spent more than US$1 billion on “freebies”.  “Freebies” have turned Zimbabweans into helpless beggars.
Positive steps include:

Invest in seed and fertiliser companies so that our brilliant farmers can find affordable seeds and fertilisers in the shops. Malawi has shown us how to do it.  Let’s keep up with Malawi.

Support our manufacturers instead of favouring foreign manufacturers.  For example, we should impose customs duties on all finished products, instead of allowing foreign producers to compete unfairly with our own producers.

Foster employment creation. For example, why not have youths employed in wealth-creation rather than in beating up political rivals?  Are we incapable of organising our youths in progressive ways?

Create more food-for-work and other public works programmes, so that more people can work.  There are a lot of jobs to be done through public works, such as road building, road repairs and dam building.  Why not build a dam for every village - 10 000 dams to start off with?  After World War II, Japan spent 35% of its budget on Public Works.

Provide better loans and banking facilities for the private sector.  China provides low cost loans for its producers.  Let’s also give loans to producers.  To begin with we can favour loans to the construction and engineering industries especially of housing and small dams; to manufacturers of agricultural inputs and equipment; to pharmaceutical companies who can produce medicines for the whole of Africa.  Let’s be producers rather than beggars.

BY FAY CHUNG

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