Political Transitions: Hegemony Renewal and Economic Policy-Shifts
THE outcome of the 2013 election had a huge bearing on the influence of the Tsvangirai-led MDC.
Raftopolous (2013 p971) argues that the “2013 Elections in Zimbabwe ushered in a renewed period of political domination by Zanu (PF) and its (then) President, Robert Mugabe. This election followed five years of a Sadc-facilitated Global Political Agreement (GPA), which was put into place after a contested presidential runoff election in June 2008”. In support of this view, Patrick Chinamasa argues that the MDC formations in the GNU lost their political capital as a result of being “swallowed-up in the comforts of office during the GNU”. “Zanu-PF was busy consolidating its power and hence its victory in 2013,” adds Chinamasa.
Therefore, Zanu-PF’s victory presented a new fate for the opposition against a backdrop of its pro-capitalist rhetoric which had been long criminalised in securing the interests of Zanu-PF: The MDC’s discourse on democratisation and broadly neoliberal economic programmes, backed by western countries, was always found wanting, against the redistributive logic of Zanu(PF)’s land reform process, the ideological legacies of the liberation movement, and the discourse of state sovereignty. (Raftopolous 2013: 984).
The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Policy (IEEP) reinforced Zanu-PF’s predominant populist culture. It was in this period that Zanu-PF consolidated its political support through the Youth Economic Empowerment Fund which was a partnership between the Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment and various financial institutions. The approach assisted in the support mobilisation of the ruling Party as argued by an MDCAlliance Legislator (Interview 10 October, 2019) who argues that: Most beneficiaries of the Youth Development Fund were people aligned to Zanu-PF. The people who benefited from those funds were from Zanu-PF structure and close allies of the former minister, Saviour Kasukuwere.
In response to this position, a Zanu-PF elected legislator argued that “the funds allocated to the youth were meant to promote entrepreneurial skills among our youth as a way of dealing with the problem of unemployment.” The two respondents share a contradiction on the underlying objective of the Youth Development Fund which augmented the longstanding indigenisation policy, but one can safely from their submissions that the programme capsuled the interests of the ruling Zanu-PF.
It must be noted that it was during this tenure of Zanu-PF power retention that the ruling Government introduced the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transform (ZimAsset). The policy was premised on four strategic clusters namely: Food security and nutrition, social services and poverty eradication, infrastructure and utilities and value addition and beneficiation (GoZ, 2013).
Zim-Asset was a product of the 2013 Zanu-PF Manifesto, the reconfiguration of the policy document from being a party manifesto to being a national blueprint reaffirms the correlation between political transitions and economic policy-formulation in Zimbabwe. The enormous election outcome in favour of Zanu-PF in the 2013 elections conferred Zanu-PF a new mandate to deliver on its 2013 election manifesto which had a strong economic underlying ground of delivering ultimate sovereignty as guided through indigenisation policy. In October 2013, Zanu-PF had a major decision-making stake in terms of law formulation.
Zanu-PF went on to enjoy a clear majority in the House of Assembly, increasing the number of its MPs to 160, and thus enjoying a large twothirds majority (in fact, closer to a three quarters majority) in the lower chamber of 210 representatives. The size of its majority meant that it could ensure the passage of any amendments to the new constitution its leadership saw fit to introduce. (Simpson & Hawkins, 2018:335)
This explains greatly why ZimAsset was crafted by Zanu-PF senior leaders and enshrined into the party’s campaign manifesto which promised among other things empowerment of the youths, rehabilitation or roads, schools, provision of health services to all the citizens, shelter and creation of employment especially for the youths. Zim-Asset further advanced the continuity of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Policy (IEEP). In the President’s preamble in the Zim-Asset, the late Robert Mugabe highlighted that: “Zim Asset was crafted to achieve sustainable development and social equity anchored on indigenisation, empowerment and employment creation which will be largely propelled by the judicious exploitation of the country’s abundant human and natural resources. (GOZ 2013: 6). This position signals a policy continuity as far as the intravenous relationship of Zim-Asset and the IEEP was concerned. However, Hadebe argues that Zim-Asset was reduced to a mere propaganda instrument by Zanu-PF: “Part of the weaknesses was that the ruling party reduced the blueprint to a party propaganda tool but it never effectively publicised it.”
Therefore, it can be argued that the need to consolidate power by Zanu-PF affected the continuity of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Policy (IEEP); at the same time creating the abrupt suspension of the Short-Term Emergency Recovery Programme (STERP). This indicates the extent to which there has been a deliberate reverting to populist economic propensities aimed at entrenching the power of the ruling, but at the same time safeguarding enduring national interests. To this end, Chinamasa (Interview, 10 October, 2019) argues that the notion of policy discontinuities undermines the perpetual essence of policies like Zim-Asset:
“There is no way any political transition can ignore issues of food security, beneficiation and valueaddition, infrastructural development and poverty eradication. The cluster provisions of the Zim-Asset blueprint contained an in-depth list of farreaching Government programmatic interventions.”
Through ardent focus on policy quick-wins the policy was illustrative of a broad set of thematic areas to be addressed through various arms of Government (GoZ 2013). It must be noted that in unambiguous contrast to earlier documents, Zim-Asset emphasised the importance of results management, an implementation structure. This heightened the urgency for multi-sectoral implementation of thematic monitoring and evaluation of progress. In other words, the common features between Zim-Asset and the current Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP) relate more deeply to the policy pillars of the preceding economic blueprint. This may suggest continued shift in the culture of policy monitoring.
4.2.4 The “New-Dispensation” and Currencies of Economic Policy
Reform?
The demise of Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s political tenure following the civil-military aided transition and the subsequent rise of Emmerson Mnangagwa as the President of Zimbabwe in November 2017 marked a landmark political transition in Zimbabwe (Rogers, 2018; Simpson & Hawkins, 2018). The promise for reform which underpinned the Mnangagwa episode has been perceived as a germinal step towards a progressive shift of power in Zimbabwe since 1980. It can be submitted that this unique transitional marked a departure from inflexible and hard-core nationalism ushering in a more accommodating political landscape for a friendly business environment. Prior to this dramatic transition, several memoirs about Mugabe depict his political career as densely Machiavellian and embedded in despotic essentialism (Holland, 2008).
However, it must be noted that the abundant criticism of Mugabe’s political life-cycle is largely centred on his shift from reconciliatory economic inclined politics. Muzondidya (2007 p325) argues that the “notions about race and nativism, nationhood and citizenship, rights and entitlements” defined Mugabe’s economic indigenisation policy. As highlighted in the previous section, the victory score of Zanu-PF in the 2013 elections was incentivised through the radical turn to the indigenisation policy.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2015) uses the term Mugabeism to account for Mugabe’s lethal approach to crushing opposition in Zimbabwean politics. This further indicates that economic policy architecture under Mugabe was defined in terms of a radical penchant and hence the land-reform programme has been characterised as a grotesque framing of economic decolonisation under Mugabe. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2015) maintains that apart from its grotesque character, Mugabeism is celebrated for its unambiguous antiimperial posture and unflinching determination to resisting neocolonialism. In support of this perspective, Obert Mpofu — one of the longest serving Cabinet Ministers under Robert Mugabe and a postMugabe Politburo Member reflects:
In his lifetime, Cde Mugabe became an ideological mantle of our centuries of resistance to colonial hegemony, plunder and exploitation. After independence, he gave a nod to Africa’s inaugural land reform programme. This substantiates the magnitude of loyalty he submitted to the liberation creed of this region and Africa at large. Therefore, the doyen pan-Africanist Mugabe here is not the person, but he is now an idea representing perennial aspirations to remodel Africa’s decolonisation project.
Mpofu further describes Mugabe: “as the bedrock of Pan-African memory; as a champion and think-tank of reframing the ontological density of Blackness”.
I READ with joy reports that our country was set to clear its arrears with Mozambique and South Africa in order to revive a trilateral agreement with the neighbouring countries as part of immediate-term solutions to stabilise local power supplies.
There is now light at the end of the tunnel.
However, workers at Zesa Holdings should not spoil our optimism. They should realise that it is no longer business as usual and rise to the occasion.
One gets the feeling that some of them only perform their duties after pocketing bribe money. As an example, I can illustrate this with an observation: There was a huge gum tree at our neighbour’s house in Parktown, which was interfering with power lines. That was early last year.
We literally begged the utility’s workers to temporarily remove the lines so that we could cut the tree without endangering our lives. They finally removed them after some months of begging but we were surprised when they went away with the lines.
After cutting the tree we notified the workers, hoping that they would come and place the lines back in position to facilitate connections but they started dilly-dallying, giving contradicting excuses.
So up to now nothing has been done but strangely enough individuals who claim to have links with our depot continue visiting us saying they can fix the power lines for us, provided we can give them a few US dollars.
We refuse to give in to corruption and hope that one day justice will prevail.