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From "Gonomics" to "Ginyanomics": The doomed options of a dying dictatorship
Tendai Biti
July 12, 2007

The on-going blitz on retail outlets and the arrest of retailers is yet another sad chapter in the intriguing and farcical expression of Robert Mugabe's rule.

During the burials of the late army Brigadier-General Armstrong Gunda and Retired Major-General Gideon Lifa, Mugabe and vice President Joseph Msika directed, from the graveside, the physical enforcement of price reduction measures that are being executed by the army, the police, militias and war veterans.

In his graveyard speech at Gunda's funeral, Robert Mugabe spoke in the following terms: "Let everybody who is in business take note. This is now going to be a rough game. We own the resources. We are the owners of this economy. We will seize these companies. We will nationalize them. We will no longer stand for their dirty tricks."

Pursuant to this statement, there has been a massive crackdown on shops, supermarkets and retail outlets as well as the arrest of retailers.

Furthermore, to legitimize this thugocracy, the Minister of Industry and International Trade gazetted new price control regulations on Friday, 6 July 2007, that proscribe any price increase from the base date of 18 June 2007.

The immediate net result of the above banditry has been the closure of many shops and the disappearance of essential food items from retail outlets. In addition, many manufacturers have simply shut shop and further, there has been a disinvestment from Zimbabwe as witnessed by the slump in the price of stock on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. These moves, coming two weeks after the gazetting of the Indigenisation and Empowerment Bill, will further heighten the serious economic crisis arresting the country.

Contrary to the views of many, the assault of retailers is not the sporadic, unplanned action of a desperate tyrant. In our view, the chaos that is being created and replayed in Zimbabwe every day is a grand scheme, carefully engineered by the military generals running and controlling the country through the Joint Operations Command (JOC).

This regime is a militarized Vampire State, whose sole aim is the continued reproduction of power---and power alone. In pursuing this quest, it will use legal and extra-legal means. Put simply, this regime will burn the house if that is a precondition for sustaining power.

The regime's actions caricature and reproduce the key components of totalitarian regimes e.g. Germany in the Third Reich, Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko, Togo under Eyadema, Malawi under Hastings Kamuzu Banda and Somalia under Siad Barre. This trait manifests itself through the obliteration of any value systems, any objectivity, any bureaucratic predictability and the use of force, coercion, immorality and corruption as major tools of arbitrary governance. All this madness is always hidden beneath an avalanche of morbid populism and infinite nationalism. Sovereignty becomes the sycophantic high note of this discordant chaos.

It was the same organized anarchy that led the Vampire State to the Gukurahundi genocide that resulted in the brutal murder of 20 000 innocent people between 1982 and 1987 in the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces.

It was the same driving urge that resulted in the violence that was unleashed on the people of Zimbabwe in the name of land reform between 2000 and 2004. This resulted in over 300 MDC supporters being killed and over one million farm workers were displaced.

The same madness and energy have been directed at the Zimbabwean economy. Between 2000 and 2007, the Zanu PF government has systematically raped this once-decent economy with the result that there has been the total collapse of any macro-economic decency and a virtual death of the supply side of the economy. The net result is that Zimbabwe is operating at less than 25 percent of normal productive capacity, a country where gross domestic savings are less than 2 percent of GDP and where gross domestic investment is dwindling, a country where the budget deficit exceeds the budget itself, a country whose economy is in its tenth year of negative growth rates.

Yet despite this chaos, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened and corruption, clientelism, kleptocracy and rent-seeking activities have become the order of the day.

The same organized chaos reached its watermark during Operation Murambatsvina that was unleashed on Zimbabweans from 19 May 2005, which Clean-Up operation displaced over one million people who became internal refugees.

A small-scale Murambatsvina is taking place at the University of Zimbabwe where hundreds of students have been expelled from their halls of residence in this brutally cold winter.

Thus, the attack on retail outlets is not a surprise at all, particularly given the election that is due in 2008. The hustlers and gangsters at the RBZ headquarters and at Munhumutapa are now in an election mode and have increased the decibel levels of fear in preparation of yet another stolen election.

All sectors are under threat; students, the church, judges, lawyers, civil society and the opposition. As we write, over 20 MDC activists arrested in March are still in custody for no apparent reason. These include Glen View MP Paul Madzore, his brother Solomon, Kudakwashe Matibiri, Phillip Mabika, Dennis Murira, Morgan Komichi, Friday Muleya, Ishmael Kauzani, Better Chakururama, Peter Chikwati, Arthur Mhizha, Phillip Katsande, Amos Musekiwa, Edmore Manyofa and Kenneth Nhemachena, among others, are still languishing in prison and being denied bail by a complicit and compromised judiciary.

The important lesson from the assault on business is that for so many years, it has been a complicit partner with Zanu PF in the process of disempowering Zimbabweans. Business has tried to bribe Zanu PF by donating millions at Zanu PF functions. It had remained deaf and indifferent to the calls for change by the MDC.

No one is safe in a train being driven by a madman. One is reminded of the words of Reverend Martin Niemoller way bank in 1945: "First they came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I was not a communist. When they came for the Jews, I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew. When they came for the Catholics, I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time there was no one left to speak."

In our view, dictatorship and totalitarianism are an artificial construct that does not last. This false construct has begun disintegrating. Four issues predicate that we are in the last stages of the demise of the regime. If this were a game of chess, then this would be the endgame dominated by passed pawns and marauding rooks.

The first critical issue is the economy. While Robert Mugabe can bash and imprison Morgan Tsvangirai and others, he cannot bash and imprison the economy. Official inflation figures of 4 500 percent are indicative and reflective of a corrosive failure to rein in inflation. Unleashing thugs and militias will not work. Nowhere in the world has an economy been run by ginya (force). Ginyanomics (the use of force) do not work. Ask the rulers of the former Eastern bloc.

The second factor is a population that is ready for change. The average age in Zimbabwe is 25 years. Anyone who is 25 today was born in an 'independent' Zimbabwe and his or her key concerns are job security and economic production. Unlike other generations, that person is not prisoner to the ideological and suffocating dictates of the national liberation war. Put simply, there has been a generational transformation of the country's geopolitics. The effect of this transformation is the occupation of space by a restive population that sees Mugabe and everything he represents as the past and everything Morgan Tsvangirai and the opposition represent as the future. It is a pure and simple manachian reality.

The third issue is the regional and African perspective of the Zimbabwean crisis. That perspective is now more enlightened and decisive. Before 11 March 2007, many believed that the crisis in Zimbabwe was an extension of the national question, a struggle between black and white or between a colonial power and its former colony. Mugabe and his cronies thus sold and projected themselves as Pan African heroes in an anti-capital, anti-global and anti-neo liberal crusade. 11 March debunked this myth when the battered head of Morgan Tsvangirai and the discoloured lumps on Grace Kwinje's skin captured the brutal expression of the regime. The regime has lost its last remaining moral face in SADC and the African continent. It has to rely on expensive propaganda quislings such as Baffour Ankomah of the New African magazine.

Fourthly, is the existence of a powerful but little understood opposition. That appears disintegrated and disunited but is otherwise. It has the capacity and numbers to win a free and fair election. The corollary of a strong opposition is a weak ruling party, Zanu PF. Mugabe has collapsed the State into Zanu PF. The State has become Zanu PF and vice-versa.

However, it is a party that is torn by acerbic and profane divisions. At least 11 persons are vying to succeed Mugabe. The conflict, rivalry and friction in the Zanu PF camps have totally paralyzed Zanu PF and the State. Zanu PF and the government have become prisoner to the mirage of succession politics.

The next few months are thus critical for civil society, the church, students, the opposition and the business community in Zimbabwe. There will be further violence, assaults and deaths.

It is critical for SADC and Africa to be aware of the dynamics that are playing out in this country and to act as an insurance and watchdog in these dark dying days.

As for Zanu PF, the end is nigh. A caring government can never succeed in terrorizing all sectors of the economy. In any contest with the people, dictators have always come second best. Mugabe cannot be an exception.

Hon Tendai Biti, MP
MDC Secretary-General

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