World hungry to invest in Zim
THE relationship between Zimbabwe and China is one born out of strategy and values of sovereign states. The Herald Correspondent Gibson Nyikadzino (GN) had a wide-ranging interview with Zanu PF Secretary for Information and Publicity Ambassador Chris Mutsvangwa (CM) to understand the origins and future prospects of this relationship, below are excerpts of the interview.
GN: What are the origins of the Sino-Zimbabwe relations and why is the period 20022003 critical for the two states?
CM: In 2002-2003, Zimbabwe announced the Look East Policy and I was drafted to become the Ambassador as a cadre to pursue that policy. It arose out of a changing geopolitical climate. This is the post-Soviet era and there was a sort of triumphalism in the West and they were saying it was the end of history because they had won and ran wild on the global stage, rampaging in Iraq because the USA felt it was a dominant superpower. In the process, the British also saw a chance for a revival of their post-imperial glory with an Anglo-Saxon ally in the USA and they had their preferred dishes on the cafeteria menu.
For the British, Zimbabwe was the country they wanted to get back in the fold through a trade-off between George Bush and Tony Blair, that Britain supports the USA in Iraq and the USA supports Britain in Zimbabwe, a colony they so much loved.
Zimbabwe has always remained dear to the British. It evinces some of those glorious aspects of the British Empire. So, when the Soviet Union collapsed, which they had seen as the main nemesis of their rule in Zimbabwe through Soviet support for the liberation movement, they saw the stage was free for them to reassert themselves.
Unfortunately for them, because of the collaboration we had done over the years as a region during the national liberation wars of southern Africa, we managed to have South Africa free and it being a regional power, South Africa could not countenance Britain nodding over into Zimbabwe.
So, they simply told Americans that they were not going to support a war against Zimbabwe even if the West wanted it. Now, America then could not have a showdown with England over South Africa because South Africa is a regional player. It is an important country. Americans caved in to South Africa’s demands which forced Britain to go for a second-class solution to destroy Zimbabwe by cutting us out of access to capital and then got into the country sabotaging aspects of national economic growth, particularly the national currency.
In 2002, there was a meeting of SADC in Maputo and then British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook issued an ultimatum on Zimbabwe after we had carried out the land reform. The restitution of land hit them at the anchor pillar of post-colonial British control over Zimbabwe. Land back to the people meant the hinges of British economic control on Zimbabwe were being dispensed with.
So, Britain then said to SADC states if Zimbabwe goes for land reform, we will make sure that it suffers a stillbirth by denying that land capital. A lot of haemorrhage of domestic capital happened. There has never been a precipitous fall of the national stock of capital of any country as that which affected Zimbabwe post-land reform. Even a country at war never had that kind of haemorrhage of capital as Zimbabwe underwent.
But complementary to that was the denial of Zimbabwe’s access to global capital markets and at that point, the West was still dominant. If you are cut out of the global financial market, you become diminished. Cook gave an ultimatum to SADC that if Zimbabwe does not reverse the land reform, we will make sure the populism of Zanu PF will come to naught because people will be starving and Zanu PF will be divorced from the people.
GN: And how did the West turn the screws on Zimbabwe?
CM: ZIDERA was passed in the US and EU followed through its Common Position.
This was instigated by Britain as a proxy for an outright military invasion on Zimbabwe which could not be realised because of the strength of the Zimbabwe National Army, but also because of the opposition from South Africa.
Then Foreign Affairs Minister Stan Mudenge (late) came back with the ultimatum which was deliberated upon with our (then) President.
There was a decision that when we were in similar challenges from a military point of view in the 1960s, when Zanu PF was formed, we looked to China, which was then an emerging military power where we got the support that became decisive in 1980. Because of the Chinese correct strategy and military support, we made sure that we brought victory and most of that was courtesy of Chinese support to Zimbabwe.
In 2002, we were now under this mortal threat to our economy which would have led to a still-born revolution. We decided to look to Beijing in a much more vigorous manner and that is how the Look East Policy was born,. It was out of desperation, and I was drafted to become the Ambassador.
And getting to China, I saw a country that was on the first paces of economic reform and was on the verge of a major take-off that was unprecedented in the history of mankind. It’s economy was now in full propulsion to become the second-largest economy in the world. So, the source of capital was no longer the monopoly of the West, China also was becoming a major source of capital on the global market.
We worked very hard to convince China that Africa was a continent they should invest in as their economy was then trading more with the developed countries. It was not really oriented towards Africa in terms of soft loans and other grants which are very limited in terms of development. But we convinced them that the military hope that they saw in Africa which now returned to become the political renaissance of Africa could now have a final phase of the economic rebound of the continent.
The message hit home to the Chinese and they encouraged some of their largest institutions and private players to refocus investment in Africa, which was not an easy walk. China, however, decided to buy one of South Africa’s biggest banks, which is Standard Bank, which had become a domestic bank-owned mostly by Afrikaners who are domestic to Africa. The largest outward investment ever in history for a single asset was the purchase of Standard Bank in South Africa. It opened an era where China’s engagement as a source of capital for Africa bloomed and things have never been the same.
Trade with Africa moved from US$10 billion to US$80 billion in five years. Today, it is US$240 billion. The marginal growth of Chinese investments in Africa has overtaken the West. It explains that China is realising opportunities in Africa and that is why the Belt and Road Initiative has extended to Africa from Asia and Europe, which has been the hot-bed of human civilisation.
GN: With the collapse of USSR and the end of history as termed by the West, there appears to be a renaissance happening in the world. How much of that renaissance has benefited Zimbabwe regarding investments and do you think from now into the future China will remain Zimbabwe’s eternal strategic partner?
CM: When I went to China, there were two companies that were operating in Zimbabwe and to some extent the Chinese civil aviation industry. To some extent, our army is formed out of the Chinese military experience during the guerilla war, that was the anchor of our relationship with China. I am happy to say that when I was in China, we managed to grow the tourism industry profile between the two countries. We started having Air Zimbabwe fly to China and this led to a boom to our small merchant class visiting China and made Zimbabwe afford cheaper goods. The inflation factor was an offset to what was happening through economic strangulation.
But the biggest breakthrough was in the telecommunications sector where Huawei decided to invest in Zimbabwe to offset the communications drought that was a result of sanctions.
Fortuitously, the major Western companies could not compete with China. We got top-class communications gear from China. That is why we have a fairly respectable telecommunications infrastructure and we thank China for
that. That would have been our Achilles heel if the West had maintained their monopoly in the technological age. We are quiet ahead of other African countries.
Remember China is a big market, it is emerging as the biggest country in terms of research and application of knowledge and a country with the freshest technological ideas. It is good that our students on scholarship are taking advantage of China in the most dynamic area of human advancement, which is education.
Zimbabwe’s prowess in education is now legendary on the African continent so by associating with China (we are not foreclosing our relationship with the West), it is going to pay huge dividends as the country takes to the next stage of the Second Republic where President Mnangagwa is now focusing on the economic deliverables for the people.
This was the basis of going to the war. People do not fight for the flag, for a party, especially in a guerilla war: those are instruments of organising the people.
The only reason people fight and are prepared to die is for the prosperity of the country. Prosperity is the price of freedom. If you don’t deliver on prosperity, then freedom has failed. The Second Republic has put all parameters on the right track. The First Republic seemed to have forgotten that the search for prosperity is the primary purpose of the revolutionary Zanu PF party.
If you cannot deliver on prosperity, then you have failed the revolution. I am happy the Second Republic has restated the original ideals of the Zimbabwe national liberation. We cannot search for prosperity at this stage of national and socio-economic development of Zimbabwe as well as the economic stage of development in the world, you cannot do that without capital.
We are in the age of capital, so Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and access to capital are key. If you do not have access to capital it is actually indispensable for a country to make it as a modern developed economy.
The First Republic was anti-FDI, in fact, it chased investors away through indigenisation and a raft of other ignorant laws, laws which did not take cognisance of the geopolitical stage of human development. President Mnangagwa then ditched the Indigenisation Act and he has moved to sort out our relationship with a very economically active chunk of our population, that is the whites, by having the global settlement of the compensation issues from the land reform era. These are residual issues.
The white population, once it eschews that it doesn’t want to take political power as a minority, there is no reason to feud with them. We are not a racist country. There is no reason to feud with our white population gratuitously. They are Zimbabweans and I am very happy the Second Republic has reached out to them and they have responded by putting a lot of investment in reconstruction, business, and joining other Zimbabweans in economic development.
Even their white diaspora that left the country in the 1970s and post-independent Zimbabwe are coming back. They no longer want to be strangers in Australia where they are treated as second-class citizens. This is their home. Incidentally, it has got one nice offshoot. There are two classes of people who can organise in Zimbabwe, that is, the white population because they used to be the government and the guerilla war veterans, including our army who organised to overthrow their system. This was through organisation. You do not learn organisation in school but it comes through practice. By reaching out to the white population, we have taken the steam out of the opposition which was going to be used to try to support regime change to overthrow the government.
As long as the white population felt that they were victimised or they were marginalised many of them would have been tempted to lend organisation to the opposition because of discontent. But now, because of the reaching out to them by the President, they have all turned out to support the President. That is why the opposition cannot be organised. Reaching out is a good thing, but it also means a prospering economy means our own post-land reform diaspora resulting from the economic meltdown are seeing the prospects of life at home being much better. The black professional diaspora is also beginning to identify with home, again, because they are easy to organise. Once they begin to say home is better, then the message of the opposition in Zimbabwe becomes hollow.
We are not talking about political opposition because our Constitution allows it. We are saying compromised opposition which works at the behest of those who want to work to restore the empire or the imperial hegemony of America. That is a good index of the success of the Second Republic that all these sections of the Zimbabwean population are beginning to identify with a patriotic fervour about homeland and that is a very good building stone for NDS1.
GN: In NDS1, Vision 2030 is set as a structure for economic reconstruction. But are all critical sectors espoused in the blueprint coming to fruition in the short-term by 2025, among them the digital economy, devolution, and bridging the rural-urban divide? Is 2030 a feasible target to have an upper-middle-income economy considering the hurdles since November 2017 to date?
CM: The beauty about President Mnangagwa and the Second Republic is that he has focused on the fundamentals that can make an economy take off. The first one was the sane management of our fiscus and his dream team of Finance Minister Hon. Prof. Mthuli Ncube and RBZ Governor Dr. John Mangudya have done wonders through balanced budgeting. We now even have a net surplus with the money going towards the growth of the economy instead of consumption. This is something that has not been the case in the past three decades.
The second thing has been the domestication of the currency. Zimbabwe has always had the strongest currency in Africa since time immemorial. That was the basis of the Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe, which is gold. That was the basis of Khami and all these citadels.