Economic recovery under ZANU-PF impossible

Source: Economic recovery under ZANU-PF impossible | The Financial Gazette February 2, 2017

By Vince Musewe

BY their own cunningness those in ZANU-PF are digging a very deep pit for their own demise.
That is truly the work of our God who makes the wise things of this world foolish.
This of course is an inevitable consequence of the selfish ambition of the ruling ZANU-PF party, which has destroyed more than it has built.
They shall truly reap the bitter fruit of the seed of bitterness, divisions, selfish ambition, greed and hate, which they have planted over the last 37 years; it is truly difficult for some of us to feel pity for them.
I truly believe that our beloved country Zimbabwe is at the cusp of a fundamental power shift that will see the emergence of a new breed of leadership.
We must not just watch in anticipation of change, but we must get ready to work and reinvent our country so that at last our deferred dreams can begin to become a reality.
Any social system based on lies does not prevail. Although it has been a long time in coming, soon I pray we shall be remembering these times with a smile as we cherish the lessons learnt.
However, we cannot afford to and must not let this opportunity to slip through our hands.
We must toughen our spirit and gather the courage to assist ZANU-PF to tip over so that we may install a new leadership with a fresh mandate to rescue the people of Zimbabwe from repression, which has cost us so much.
It is obvious that without any political reforms we cannot expect to create the new Zimbabwe we all want.
Without a fundamental reform of our economy we must not expect any miracles in 2017.
There is a theory in systems thinking called the iceberg phenomenon.
Systems thinking, which is the cognitive ability to study and understand systems of many kinds; and integrating information from different sources and different types, is the label for a worldview which looks at interconnections and causal relationships rather than at snapshots.
This worldview tries to see that which is not immediately obvious.
So, for example, we simply look at the issue of lack of political reforms and focus at that, rather than looking deeper in order to address the underlying issues which are not obvious — the iceberg underneath.

Systems thinking has been described as Uncommon Sense.
When faced with complexity in the internal — or external dynamics of any system as we do here in Zimbabwe, it is useful to use this systems lens to avoid what is often referred to as unintended consequences and resistance to change.
It has been said that change management is resistance management.
The iceberg phenomenon is a useful and practical way to describe how we may adopt this systems perspective, and start to appreciate how different things are interconnected.
With this systemic insight we can then learn to intervene more effectively, in high leverage areas, within the complex dynamics around us.
The root cause of our lack of economic performance is lack of accountability and political leadership.
Without accountability it means that nobody is taking responsibility for change.
Nobody is taking responsibility for the status quo.
This means that things will deteriorate until such time as citizens realise that there is nobody out there who is going to solve our socio-economic problems.
Good examples of this are the state of our roads and the issue of waste management.
The reality is that we cannot expect any economic growth without investment into our productive capacity.
We cannot expect serious investment in our productive capacity if it is evident to all out there that as a country we cannot manage our own funds and our affairs.
We cannot expect to be attractive to anyone out there if we continually avoid talking about our problems and rely on the old to bring in the new.
That is not going to happen.
Our keys to economic recovery remains political and economic reforms as stated in the LIMA strategy document by Finance Miniater, Patrick Chinamasa, in September 2015.
These include: The strengthening of confidence in the financial services sector, accelerating re-engagement with the international community, revitalising agriculture, advancing beneficiation in or value addition agriculture and mining, focusing on infrastructure development, unlocking small to medium enterprise potential, improving the investment climate, accelerating public enterprise reform, modernising labour laws and aligning of laws with the Constitution and seriously dealing with corruption.
The issue is with leadership and a sincere effort by this government to change things for the better. I am afraid that ZANU-PF has proven to us all that they are not only incapable of fundamental reforms, but that they do not have the capacity to competently manage a change process.
Because of this, economic recovery in 2017 and beyond remains a pipe dream without a radical change of direction.
The economy is therefore likely to continue to contract.
In my opnion, the command agriculture initiative will not deliver food security meaning that we will continue to have a large trade deficit, while we are not going to see civil servants retrenched, especially as we go towards an election year.
I can guarantee that we will see more public resources going towards feeding the ZANU-PF patronage machinery; thus leaving citizens exposed to increasing unemployment, reducing disposable incomes and a fast deteriorating infrastructure.
We will continue to rely on the paltry fund inflows from minerals, but due to inconsistent application of policies and corruption, the country will fail to maximise on export revenues.
The little that we are making will certainly continue to be diverted to feed the secret ZANU-PF crony, whose appetite for luxury cars, ostentatious consumption will limit our potential to get out of this self-manufactured rut.
No reduction in the budget deficit will come our way and we will continue to be a nation of unproductive consumers of imports.
The only change we need is political and that unfortunately is not coming soon. The next months will therefore certainly test our resolve as a nation and all we can do is to organise for substantive political change in 2018, God willing.
Vince Musewe is an independent economist and author. You may contact him directly on vtmusewe@gmail.com