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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Zimbabwe GNU: What next after the political settlement? Download
this document On September 14, a political settlement between Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara was signed. The newly formed Government of National Unity faces a number of responsibilities, one of which is to formulate and implement policies that quickly alleviate the suffering of the majority of the Zimbabweans. Here I put forward some of the possible ways in which this new government, if it works out, can explore if it is to extricate the country from its current socioeconomic morass. The aim of economic policy should be to revive production and social services, re-engage with the wider world and halt inflation. Agriculture Reviving production would include enabling as many peasant farmers as possible to return to self-sufficiency and redistributing unused land. That means people who obtained land in 2000 and after should only be allowed to keep land they can use. It would be reasonable to allow small-scale farmers, with holdings no larger than were allocated to smallscale farmers in the resettlement schemes of the 1980s, a grace period in which they are given better access to inputs and, say two years in which to prove they make good use of them. Those who obtained larger farms and do not use them should be immediately deprived of those farms, which should, where possible, be divided among small farmers. Those who plundered farms should be made to restore the equipment they removed or its value. There is no objection to some white farmers getting some of their farms back, if they can use them for the benefit of all. Since most white commercial farms before 2000 were not fully used, any owners whose farms were restored to them should receive only the area of land they were then using. Any usable land not returned to them should be distributed among small farmers, under an agreement that they could share the facilities for transport, storage and marketing of the remaining large farm. Most of the fully-utilized commercial farms were in agro-ecological region 1, mostly the Eastern Highlands, and were specialized, requiring special skills. They are not the largest farms, but should be very productive. We must not forget that black commercial farmers were also dispossessed. They were serious farmers and are more likely to still be around. They too must have their land restored on the same terms. Manufacturing In manufacturing and mining, the emphasis should also be, not on merely increasing production, but on rebuilding the country's industrial capacity destroyed since the introduction of ESAP in 1990. This implies:
Emphasis should be placed, even in mining, on maximizing value added to the raw product extracted. This emphasis has been largely lacking in the mining enterprises which have expanded since 2000. Their ores and mattes are exported with the minimum of processing, only undertaken in order to reduce the bulk of ore exported, e.g. platinum and nickel mining. A further complication here is that the ZANU-PF elite have used political power to establish their economic power. They own many of what businesses remain, but they are parasites, more interested in making a quick buck by selling off assets than in using them for productive purposes. But they are there, and dislodging them from economic power will be more difficult than dislodging them from political power. Trade International agreements signed by the illegitimate regime since the 2000 election should all be reviewed. Examples include Economic Partnership Agreements with the EU and the rules of the World Trade Organization. Rules on intellectual property rights hamper, among other things, public health by restricting access to both modern and traditional medicines. More serious efforts need to be made to co-operate with other African and Third World countries a) to achieve a more just international trade and economic order b) to co-ordinate industrial development in Africa so as to increase the continent's self-sufficiency. Visit the ZIMCODD fact sheet Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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