From the Editor's desk: After the crisis, now the insanity

Corrections
BY NEVANJI MADANHIRE The question on most people’s lips these days is: How will the Zimbabwean crisis end? But in asking this question many have failed to see the transient nature of the so-called crisis.

At the turn of the millennium the crisis was that of seriously bad governance. Having been in power for 20 years, the Zanu PF government had distanced itself from reality. This disconnection with the common people led to a serious lack of social services.

The decade leading to the turn of the century was that of disillusionment. The first decade of our independence was that euphoria and hope; the man on the street was hopeful that Zimbabwe, under a black government, was going to remove the suffering people had endured under successive settler regimes. But realising this was not to be, disillusionment  began to set in and the people wanted a change of government. This wish culminated in the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999.

There had been precedents elsewhere particularly just across the Zambezi in Zambia where the Movement for Multiparty Democracy had just routed the dictatorship of founding President Kenneth Kaunda. The majority Zimbabweans saw hope in the new winds of change that were sweeping across the continent. They rallied behind their new hope, the MDC. Their show of force was epitomised by the massive anti-Zanu PF vote in the constitutional referendum of February 2000. Indeed it was an anti-Zanu PF vote rather than a no-vote against the constitution draft.

In the eight years that followed, the crisis shifted from that of bad governance and the disillusionment it spawned. It changed into unbridled repression. Seeing the results of the referendum as a wake-up call that Zanu PF was no longer popular and the people wanted to see the back of it, the party saw its only way to survive as through repression. Indeed the period beginning 2000 and ending in 2008 was arguably the darkest chapter of our post-independence history; democratic space was closed and the police and the army were used not to protect the people but to suppress them.

 

There were a record four elections and all of them were characterised by extreme violence. Thousands of people were killed and lots more were displaced. The rule of law was replaced by the law of the jungle – survival of the fittest. Fittest here meant those who had the backing of the police, the military and militias created for the sole purpose of repressing popular sentiment.

 

By June 2008 the repression had reached a climax; the southern African sub-continent, fronted by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc)  intervened resulting in the arrangement that is ruling the country today.

So, what is the nature of the crisis now? — When people ask how the crisis is going to pan out, what crisis are they talking about? Repression has subsided, though there are still large pockets of it here and there. There are still isolated incidents of people being murdered for their political affiliation. There are still groups being denied the basic human right of the freedom of assembly. The press is still under severe threat.

Arguably, the crisis is no longer about regime change as it was in 2000, although that would be very useful. The crisis is no longer about, “When is the old man going?” Zimbabweans have resigned themselves to their fate; his life-presidency is now foregone. Only in December last year he told his party: “Sometimes there have been calls that I must retire but as long as there is still work to be done…I cannot leave you on your own in the deep end.” And there is, for him, lots of work still to be done!

And for God’s sake, don’t believe that Nigerian charlatan TB Joshua, lest you begin to have ideas.

The crisis now is the insanity that the earlier crises — bad governance, disillusionment, lack of rule of law and repression — spawned.  The sheer enormity of the insanity is shocking. A cabinet minister goes to a GMB depot and collects 40 tonnes of fertiliser — that’s a whole gonyet (haulage truck) or two — for his own personal use. To do this he jumps a queue of hundreds of poor villagers who are only asking for a wheel-barrowful of the commodity!

These are the very people who voted him into power and who he is going to beg for the vote in the next election!

But the insanity is much more intense than that. Where did the fertiliser come from? Fertiliser manufacturers were ordered by this same cabinet minister to produce the commodity and deliver to the GMB without payment under the promise that government would get money from the national purse. But the manufacturer does not have the seed money to produce the fertiliser. Because it’s an order, the manufacturer borrows the money from the bank at an extortionate interest rate. After the fertiliser has been manufactured and delivered (and looted) there is no money to pay the manufacturer, let alone the bank. In one master-stroke the fertiliser manufacturing industry has been destroyed.

What else has been destroyed? The agriculture sector itself! —All those farmers who have not been able to access fertiliser because it has been looted by the big fish, will abandon their farms and plots resulting in reduced hectarages. Forget about our former breadbasket status.

Now they are even looting electricity! There is no difference between someone who has taken delivery of US$150 000 worth of fertiliser without paying and another who has used US$150 000 worth of electrical energy and refuses to pay for it! They have both looted. What effect does this have on the power sector?— Zesa cannot maintain infrastructure; cannot pay its external debts and cannot expand its power generation capacity.

There are many more examples of the insanity that now pervades our national landscape. Look at what Ignatius Chombo is doing to our local authorities! He is dismissing elected mayors and councillors and replacing them with his own people! Doesn’t this create the right conditions for looting? What exactly would be the “special interest” of these so-called special interest councillors?

The insanity we are experiencing is the new form of the Zimbabwe crisis. How is it going to end?

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