Zimbabwe collapse is clearly no model to follow
A debate has emerged about how the global pandemic could result in economic reform.
EFF leader Julius Malema and Ekurhuleni mayor Mzwandile Masina sparked a mini-debate — and some outrage — arguing that the coronavirus should lead to the collapse of the “white-owned” economy.
They implied that the collapse of white business would create a chain of events that would lead to radical economic reform, which would result in greater black economic participation.
As seductive as it is for those who see themselves as revolutionaries, this is a form of magical thinking.
We already have a model for revolution that comes by way of the sudden collapse of a whitedominated economy. That example is Zimbabwe.
Twenty years ago, in the year 2000, late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe began expropriating white-owned farmland under a policy of fast-track land reform.
At the time, the policy had its supporters and detractors.
However, even my most radical Zimbabwean friends eventually stopped believing there was some imminent revival of the country in mind. They are disillusioned.
Not only at the collapse of the economy but also the collapse of their own internal hope for the country of their birth.
Twenty years have passed and I am often stunned to meet young Zimbabweans in their early 20s who have no memory of a functional government which sustained huge social programmes.
A whole generation of Zimbabweans have reached adulthood with no experience of an economically stable Zimbabwe.
Sudden economic collapse in SA, a country of 56 million people with 60% of them in urban areas, would lead to serious social distress and intensification of violence.
History shows us that under conditions of distress, fascist governments emerge and they mete out more violence to control populations.
This is not to defend white economic dominance.
What bothers me is this commonplace idea that only revolutionary chaos or huge social instability can deliver a just economy for black people.
I cannot accept radicalism to facilitate collapse as a path to change. Is it not more radical to think about how to make revolutions happen without black people suffering any more than they already do?
I have often heard “radicals” arguing that black South Africans are already suffering and hungry, it cannot get any worse.
And yet, again, in the example of Zimbabwe we can see that things can and do get worse.
Food and fuel shortages have plagued Zimbabweans for 20 years.
Millions have reluctantly migrated to neighbouring countries so that they can meet economic responsibilities for their families.
If 70 days of lockdown in SA has caused immense economic hardship for many people, imagine Zimbabweans, who have lived with severe economic distress for 20 years.
How would SA make it through 20 years of what Zimbabwe has undergone?
Believing that such a scenario cannot happen here is to be deluded by a myth that SA is somehow exceptional.
It is to believe that SA has some special magic that Zimbabwe did not.
The way I see it, the question of how to reform the economy without causing extraordinary suffering is the big question of the next 30 years.
I do not think the answer is easy.
Imagine two universes. In the first, which is ours, Zimbabwe has lost 20 productive years because of its political paradigm.
In a second, parallel universe, over the same 20 years Mugabe decides the society will invest heavily in a new generation to bring Zimbabwe on par with the technical skills of Shenzhen and innovation of Silicon Valley.The second scenario could have been entirely possible but it would have required a different theory of revolution.
The Asian Tigers chose a different theory of revolution and that has made all the difference to history.
A whole generation of Zimbabweans have reached adulthood with no experience of an economically stable Zimbabwe