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Zanu (PF) old guard incapable of novel solutions
Dumisani Muleya, Business Day
April 13, 2005

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/zimbabwe.aspx?ID=BD4A35778

WHILE Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu (PF) mandarins celebrate their disputed triumph in the recent general election, their Pyrrhic victory has thrown the country’s economic recovery agenda into disarray.

It is now clear to everybody except perhaps President Robert Mugabe and his adherents in perpetual denial — that Zimbabwe’s structural economic problems cannot be resolved without fundamental political reforms.

Although in theory the border between politics and economics is open, the reality is that politics and economics overlap. Often, bad politics and policies breed economic failure. Politics affects economics and vice-versa.

Zimbabwean leaders are either off message or are deliberately ignoring this crucial link. That is why Mugabe seems to entertain the delusion that he can resolve the economic crisis without cleaning up the political mess first.

The political problems in Zimbabwe are clear. The country has a ruling party suffering from the malaise of a highly repressive former liberation movement that has failed to renew itself and is now unable to cope with new political and economic dynamics.

Analysts generally agree Zanu (PF) needs to open up and renew its closed leadership structure, repackage itself, and catch up with a society that has moved too far ahead of it.

But the party appears unable to adjust to changing political and socioeconomic conditions. It has resorted to coercive measures to maintain its faltering grip on a society rejecting its antiquated philosophy and discredited ideological dogmas.

Zimbabwe’s leadership, policy and institutional failures, as well as shifts in the global political economy, largely created the current crisis. This led to the emergence of a new political formation which managed to rope in most other social forces gathering against the ruling elite.

The socioeconomic conditions and attendant political instability created a number of key social formations that later coalesced into the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The main labour movement was instrumental in this and that is why most MDC leaders came from it.

The present political impasse was caused by the three disputed elections since 2000. While Mugabe still claims the MDC is a front for western powers, his argument has long lost credibility and no longer sells — even to his closest allies, including SA.

This means Mugabe must get real and recognise he cannot wish away the MDC unless he performs an economic miracle to eliminate the conditions in which it thrives.

Mugabe’s argument against the MDC has been riddled with fundamental contradictions inherently built into it by his antiintellectual attempt to reason through conclusions. On the one hand, he says the MDC is driven by protest votes, meaning he appreciates the local environment that created it, while on the other he claims it is by definition a British-sponsored party. This leaves a huge credibility gap. But all the same he has used this reasoning to reject talks on political reforms with the opposition.

Without political consensus, fashioned out of a negotiated political settlement, economic problems will remain. This is the grim reality Mugabe is scared of facing. The past week demonstrated that Mugabe and his government are either unwilling or simply unable to resolve Zimbabwe’s crisis.

A few days after the election, shortages of basic commodities including bread, milk, sugar, and maize meal resurfaced. The fuel crisis also returned. Other problems remain and will continue unless there is a dramatic intervention.

But Mugabe and Zanu (PF)’s reaction to the situation was, to say the least, pathetic. Instead of moving with calculated urgency to ease the troubles, they resorted to populist excuses and threats.

Mugabe’s party met last Wednesday and on Sunday, but the economy did not feature in its proceedings.

Zanu (PF) is preoccupied with pursuits such as piecemeal constitutional amendments.

The party old guard is retreating to certainties of the past and digging in, while reciting slogans and demagoguery as a substitute for sound policy. This reactionary posturing will not change anything, except for the worse.

*Muleya is Business Day’s Harare correspondent.

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