SOON after the results of the July 2013 elections were announced, the MDC-T secretary-general and former Finance minister Tendai Biti dared Zanu PF to rig the economy.
This not so friendly piece of advice was proffered in the wake of strong suspicions and allegations of Zanu PF rigging the electoral process to their advantage.
This valedictory warning directed towards the “victorious” Zanu PF party can easily be misinterpreted as a cheap parting shot from a disgruntled loser who could not stomach the idea of a humiliating defeat. Some socio-political and socio-economic commentators could have seen some sense in Biti’s warning; while elections can be won and lost through chicanery, the economy is one area that demands rigour, honesty and discipline.
The economy does not perform to slogans like tribal dancers prancing wildly to the loud beating of the drums. Economic woes cannot be wished away at a spiritual appeasement ceremony (bira). To right an economy that has seen bad days needs a calculated approach; yet for an economy that has seen many bad decades like Zimbabwe’s needs a new management regime. Who mentioned regime change?
Anywhere, six months after those astonishing electoral successes posted by Zanu PF, Biti’s warning is almost resonating in our households like a prophetic curse. Zimbabwe’s economy has nose-dived into an abyss in response to Zanu PF’s victory which in some circles is contentious. To make matters worse, Zanu PF ministers are running around like headless chickens making unco-ordinated and contradicting utterances that relate to the economy.
As Zanu PF ministers prevaricate and procrastinate on important issues, the economy is meanwhile finding bliss in oblivion. This does not make Biti a teller of fortunes or rather misfortunes; he is neither a prophet of doom nor has he a death wish towards the wellbeing of the country’s economy. He is a politician, a lawyer and a former Finance minister with insider information on Zanu PF’s incompetence where matters of the economy are concerned.
Having served as Finance minister, Biti was in a very good position to foretell where the economy was likely to head in the hands of a corrupt and clueless gang of suspected kleptomaniacs. It was very easy for Biti to predict that the obstinate, arrogant and offensively educated revolutionaries were likely to reverse the small economic gains that were achieved during the life-span of the Government of National Unity.
Biti’s seemingly thinly veiled warning on the disaster ahead was primarily informed by the historical performances of the de facto junta. Zanu PF had overseen the progressive shrinking of the economy from that fateful day they took over the responsibility to rule the country in 1980. Biti was probably affected by the year-on-year deterioration of the economy when he was at school. He saw how the unplanned pay rises drove inflation up and eroded the local currency’s buying power. As a student at university, Biti had the misfortune to experience the decline of a healthy economy into a ramshackle one.
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When the then powerful Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) organised those crippling stay-away episodes, the real issue was the economy. Biti would have been aware that the ZCTU organised the stay-aways in protest against a bleak economic outlook. It was not the politics of land redistribution that forced the trade unionists to dabble in politics. As it is, Biti was privy to the formation of this alternative political force which offered to mend the mess Zanu PF had created with the economy.
For Biti to have been part of the group that instigated the formation of the MDC, he would have seen a lot going wrong in terms of management of the economy.
He knew from experience as an ordinary Zimbabwean that Zanu PF had failed the people. There was evidence everywhere to prove that the economy was slowly grinding to a halt while the Zanu PF top brass were fiddling. The powerful men and women in Zanu PF spent valuable time exercising their right to mutually admire one another and at the same time gloating over their so-called glorious expeditions during the liberation war as if the war was fought in Mars.
Biti and many other Zimbabweans knew that after Zanu PF’s electoral victory chaos would reign. There were signs that Zanu PF would spend the next few years trying to convince the people that they had won the elections fair and square. Lingering in the people’s minds was a strong suspicion that the propaganda machinery would be oiled with the most expensive lubricant in the market to enable it to harangue and harass the people into a state of submission and acceptance. The propaganda network will work overtime to divert the people’s attention from economic issues.
This goes to teach us that political parties can rig electoral outcomes in their favour and bombard citizens with propaganda yet the economy is not an area that can be forged, rigged or imitated.
Zanu PF lacks the integrity and discipline to run the country’s economy. One would think they put some comrade who was in charge of logistics at Tembwe to be the nation’s main man in charge of the economy. Masola waDabudabu is a social commentator
