Grand coalition imminent

For the second time in less than a decade Zimbabwe stands on the foot of a total collapse of state and economic implosion.

Source: Grand coalition imminent – NewsDay Zimbabwe July 6, 2016

Maynard Manyowa

On the back of a severe drought that has left nearly half the population desperately in need of food aid, a massive cash crisis has crippled the nation’s banking sector and paralysed the entire economy.

At the centre of the disaster is President Robert Mugabe, the former guerrilla leader, the only man to have led the country since its independence in 1980, and his Zanu PF party which ratifies him as the only centre of power.

Six years ago, a similar script and pattern of events culminated in a regional intervention that forced Mugabe into a power-sharing deal with MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara of the MDC and the country abandoned use of its money, adopting the US dollar as its main currency, among others.

The near collapse in 2008 was the result of over 18 years of intensified “institutional bad governance”. From around 1990, government ministers reportedly looted state funds to the cost of billions of dollars causing permanent injury to critical sectors like banking, and the motor industry.

Meanwhile, the administration borrowed heavily from international institutions, looted the funds, defaulted payments and severed relations with development partners.

No effort was put into production, while government expenditure grew exponentially, ultimately sowing the seeds for a disaster.
Unbudgeted pay outs and participation in a costly war in the Democratic Republic of Congo bankrupted the country, crashed the currency and led to civil unrest.

In retaliation, the administration orchestrated a widespread violent crackdown on civil society and opposition, engaged in racist illegal land invasions which brought the already bankrupt country’s agricultural production and its top revenue earner to a standstill.

This led to massive food shortages and in 2002 the citizens voted against Mugabe, who allegedly resorted to rigging and intensified human rights abuses against civilians.

For this, he earned himself and key members of his administration targeted sanctions from the US and European Union. Zimbabwe’s currency went into a free fall. The government raided all foreign currency reserves from the banking sector.

After a heavy election loss in 2008, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission withheld results and Zanu PF launched a brutal attack on civilians and plunged the entire southern Africa region into a humanitarian crisis. Regional leaders intervened and forced Mugabe into a power-sharing deal with the opposition.

For four years the country stabilised economically and politically. In 2013, the country headed into elections which were once again marred by irregularities.

In the aftermath of that victory, Zanu PF returned to its old ways — corruption, theft, looting, abductions and senseless policy. By end of 2014, less than two years after the power-sharing deal the country was basically bankrupt.

Again the government raided commercial banks of their cash deposits and replaced them with Treasury Bills, which they hoped to settle from ensuing revenue.

After struggling to pay back on time, the consumptive government eventually failed outright, causing banks to find themselves stuck with TBs which they can’t give to their customers.

Depositors find themselves stuck with electronic balances which they can’t withdraw. Businesses are failing to settle payments abroad, and suppliers have suspended deliveries to Zimbabwe — a drought-hit country that imports everything from ear buds to dental floss.

The implication is massive food shortages and interruptions in production for whatever few companies are left, and the emergence of a parallel market where “hard cash/paper money” is sold in exchange for electronic funds at a premium — a case of the US$ trading itself.

To address the cash crisis, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya has suggested bond notes. Essentially, the country will import cash which they will prevent from going into circulation, and rather print Zimbabwe’s own equivalent version of US$.

The solution is both unsustainable and illogical. It does not address the critical problems. Zimbabwe’s government spends more than it earns, creating a huge budget deficit.

The administration obliterated production and manufacturing capacities to near insignificant levels. Rampant corruption in the diamond mining sector led to loss of revenue four times the budget. Consequently, Zimbabwe is heavily reliant on imports to service non-productive needs like food. This is called a trade deficit and will always lead to cash shortages.

It is common knowledge that one can create double and triple entries for genuine US$ through local replicas, but they can only spend real money once.

In fact, Mugabe has responded by laying the blame on citizens for resisting new money. Having failed with the West and now the Look East policy, one of his vice-presidents has called on Zimbabwe’s Diaspora to help.

It is a paradox of Shakespearean proportions, given how Mugabe’s actions and lack thereof simultaneously resemble a spectacular kind of ignorance, one that is grandiosely self-harming.

The ignorance that calls for exiled Diaspora investment in fixing a mess it has created, while simultaneously threatening to unleash a second genocide. It is ignorant to seek help from expatriates that fled from his state-sponsored brutality and State-induced poverty.

A Diaspora that is fully aware that the leadership will divert whatever investment is remitted and spurn it on joy rides to Singapore. That is akin to one teaching one’s bully how to fight.

Diaspora capital, just like local and international capital, is a coward, and a smart one with a long memory. It takes a special kind of ignorance for one to think one can promise genocide and simultaneously beg the potential victims to sponsor it.

When a leadership’s ignorance is so arrogant, it is destructive. When it is not held to account, it develops an obsession with chaos. It assumes that for every bearer cheque it can do it again in a bond note, or in one land reform it can pull off another in indigenisation, or Gukurahundi.

Zanu PF’s post-independence narrative is marred by chaos in every form imaginable. Not only have they created and perpetuated national suffering, but they have used it as a tool to elongate their rule.

As the sole bearers of wealth in a carved matrix, they have created a patronage system that relies heavily on keeping the masses in poverty and lining the pockets of those that keep them in power. But as we know, dynasties do die, and often times they are the midwives of their own demise.

Our leadership’s arrogance and/or reliance on chaos though hurtful; is also their downfall. Governments that create and ignore chaos cannot always control it.

The leadership in Zimbabwe has lost control. Chaos threatens to turn into its big brother anarchy.

The country is out of money, and the entire government is broke and will not be able to pay its workers.

Once capital starts to flee, it does at the speed of light. Unlike activists, and opposition leaders, you cannot abduct it either.

The traditional instruments of state terror, like the police, the army, will themselves for the first time struggling to get their salaries too.

While it has been easy to replicate the economic chaos of 2008, the regime will find it impossible to replicate the same levels of terror.

The centre cannot hold and faces internal revolts on three fronts. Factionalism has torn the autocrats apart and Mugabe has lost his grip on power and faces implosion. He finds himself ensnared by another of his own vices.

The citizens are rising with never before seen unity. Arrests have not led to silence; they have increased the dissent.

Having lost contact with reality, it overtakes him, and history sweeps him brutally but rightly aside. Mugabe is halfway there. Having ruled for so long with an iron fist, his favourite vices appear to have ensnared him. Chaos is like borrowed time, having mortgaged the future by borrowing the present; he ultimately forgot that the future arrives.

For Zimbabwe it has, and as the country collapses, it will do so with him on board.

l Maynard Manyowa is a political commentator and contributing Editor of Khuluma Afrika — a budding center for analysis, commentary and investigative journalism.