LAST Sunday Southern Eye carried an opinion from Bulawayo South MP Eddie Cross that made interesting reading for me from a variety of angles.
I take Cross to be saying that his forefathers came to this country and carried out great developments and built an economy that the current indigenous people are now reversing.
He then goes on to say that as long as the matter of property rights is not addressed there will be no investors coming with their money to invest in Zimbabwe and locals will invest outside the country.
I take it that by property he means farms and mines and by local nationals he means white brothers and sisters who used to call themselves Rhodies when they still had political power in this country.
I also hear Cross telling readers that as long as foreign capital does not to come to Zimbabwe in its own terms then Zimbabwe will be poor and its population will suffer forever.
I hear him saying that the settler generation did not make any serious mistakes and only indigenous people are making serious mistakes that will cost the country in the future. Eddie Cross . . . wena!
I guess Cross is right in a way because the story of Zimbabwe is a very emotional one and I understand very well where he is coming from.
The only sad thing is that he thinks and feels that his side of the story of Zimbabwe is the only legit one and all should believe it as the correct version.
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He also thinks that because his forefathers built their economy in Rhodesia, so his theories on the current economy of this country and world are the correct ones.
No Cross, Zimbabwe is not a single sided story.
It is many versions that have a different meaning to many different people and it is for this reason that it is a beautiful country to many people in many different ways.
As much as you have your own version of how great an economy your forefathers built, I too have my own version on the same.
Your forefathers built a stupid unsustainable economy Cross and it is the reason why we are today going through this painful economic revolution.
Had your forefathers built an inclusive economy we would not have a need to be talking of indigenising our national economy.
We would not have had any need to be talking about taking any citizens’ farms or mine shares.
You would have no need yourself to be talking about the respect of property rights.
However, this is so today because your grandparents came and built an unsustainable project that is now costing a lot of people their investments.
We are in this mess today because we could not live with the unsustainable apartheid economy that was created in this country.
The indigenous people have been pushed by the poor unsustainable economic model.
They are determined to change it no matter what version of your story you choose to tell and to whom you tell it.
What was created was unsustainable and we as Zimbabweans don’t need it. Period!
If it was great work then get it clear that it was great to you, your children, and friends and not to all of us. If it’s not good for everyone then it’s not good at all regardless of who created it.
Not only were the economic networks that were built unsustainable, but even the politics that were created in 1929 were also unsustainable.
The 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence was the most stupid political adventure to be created the world over.
Two percent of a settler population to rule the rest of the indigenous people for a thousand years was a little bit silly.
Some of you went into a bush war to defend that shallow thinking of a political model and hoped to win!
You all then went on to create laws, build companies and farms on this crazy political landscape and you hoped to remain prosperous till Jesus Christ returned to earth.
Instead they soon found out that they had created for themselves and their generations to come a serious political revolution by the indigenous population that you could only try and contain without success till 1980.
However, this is where you blow my mind Cross and your club; how did you think that creating a political revolution would not necessitate the need for an economic revolution to follow?
What did you do in the 20 years after 1980 when the political revolution came to an end to avert the economic revolution that you were aware of because others had laid some fertile ground for it?
You did nothing though you knew as much as we all knew that it would eventually come some day.
Now it’s here and we are all painfully swimming through it and you are now the first ones to run all over the world screaming property rights. Get real ndoda. Imfazo kasuwomdlalo wamatope.
Cross just tell your friends including your foreign investors with the money that you think you will change our lives that we as a country, are in the middle of an economic revolution that your so-called great brilliant forefathers created.
They can hold on to their precious money if they want to until the economic revolution is over and as a nation we have created both a new sustainable political and economic order and not the madness that had been created.
Zimbabwe is going nowhere and they don’t need to rush if they feel it’s not yet time.
The country and its people will always be here open for business whenever they are ready.
However, remind them too that capitalism has always worked in a funny way. It ventures where it’s most risky.
While they hold on to their money waiting for some angels to address your property rights concerns created by your grandfathers, other capitalists from around the globe will move in where they see high risk.
Your sympathisers whose money you think will do miracles for Zimbabwe may be too late to land with their precious money to get any meaningful returns on their investments. Global economics of this century is ruthless.
The economic infrastructure that your forefathers built was not the best for this civilisation after all, so stop boasting about it.
For example, your parents brought the telegraph wires and the telephone, but still failed to connect every home in the country.
Today without the participation of your forefathers the mobile technology is here connecting even villagers herding cattle in the hills to the rest of the world.
So what you call development brought by your forefathers is nothing compared to what we have today in telecommunications.
It shall be so in all other sectors of the economy in the not so distant future and because of the indigenisation revolution that is underway, the indigenous people will be running the show.
What you call development in yesterdays’ world is in fact, child’s play in today’s world. More is coming and the indigenous people will be in charge this time around and not your forefathers.
The economic revolution is slow, but it is sure and real, like it or not. After that will come African prosperity that even your fathers would never ever have dreamt affording to the indigenous people.
The property rights crises Cross is part of fixing the economic mess. It is part of the necessary economic revolution. In any revolution there are loses and casualties, people, property, laws, infrastructure, systems, corruption and so on. It is for this reason why it is called a revolution and not a development. This will all come to pass after the revolution is over and new growth shall come to emerge.
To stop a revolution you need to have superior political power that can only be mandated by the majority of the population.
It is a fact that all Rhodies have no political power in Zimbabwe any more.
If they choose as a few have done to go against the current political power “as superior whites” in a negative way then they will continue to lose even the little economic power that they have.
Many of our white brothers and sisters have become warlords operating from across the world instead of working collectively with the indigenous people to correct the unsustainable national economy framework that was created by their forefathers.
They choose to shift the responsibility of what is happening in the country to indigenous people. This is not the way to go.
They can influence better positive change and outcomes of this economic revolution from within the country than from outside operating as warlords to intercept international capital coming into Zimbabwe.
They can only delay the economic revolution as they did with the political revolution but they can’t stop it and Cross you should know better.
We should all focus on the economic revolution taking place in the country to bring it to its quick logical conclusion to allow us to address matters of bad governance, corruption and human rights violations of any kind.
It will be very difficult to eliminate these while a revolution of any sort and magnitude is underway.
See now I have a different story from your story because Zimbabwe is not just one story with a single interpretation.
It is a great country that none of us, our friends included, should try and hold to ransom.
Thank you Cross for a thought-provoking article and for freely and openly participating in national politics in an effort to fix our economic mess. Have a blessed 2014.
