Back to Index

Fate of a nation when a govt thinks small
Chido Makunike
February 10, 2006

http://www.theindependent.co.zw/news/2006/February/Friday10/4158.html

MORE than halfway into the best Zimbabwean rain season in many years, we still hear farmers bemoaning the unavailability of inputs critical to maximising their yields.

Despite the best efforts of those who would really like to make a serious go at farming, they once again find that the overall economic environment is working against them, rather than facilitating their work.

The reaction from the government that should go all out to create a conducive environment is at best helpless hand-wringing, at worst outright lies about what the true situation is in regarding fuel and fertiliser, among others.

Still we hear and hope for a "bumper harvest". The state propaganda services are already gearing up for a declaration of such a "bumper harvest", and one almost gets the sense that we are going to get it regardless of what the actual crop yields are!

A bumper harvest may not be a matter of tonnages, but of declaration in order to score points in the propaganda war that the Mugabe regime has been losing worldwide so pathetically in the last several years.

But let us think positively and hope that farmers in general will do well this year despite all the odds against them. Yet even if we do so, the fact of the matter is that for the overwhelming majority of farmers, whatever they achieve this farming season will still be a fraction of what would be possible in a supportive economic environment, or even in a merely ordinary one, versus the extraordinarily negative one that prevails.

Government agriculture officials admit that a lot of the maize crop at tasselling stage is yellow because of nitrogen deficiency, which means a less than optimum yield.

In the last several years we have witnessed many incidences of small-scale farmers who worked hard to grow easily perishable crops like vegetables, only to have them rot by the roadside because diesel for trucks to ferry them to markets was either unavailable, or the cost of the transport was beyond their means. All these and many more are continuing realities that will as before, impact on the final harvest.

So, if by some miracle Zimbabwe were this year able to harvest enough maize for its own consumption until the following harvest, that would be quite an achievement, given the steady decline of the last years that has resulted in one of Africa's main breadbaskets joining the ranks of dependent, beggar nations.

In the sense of comparison to the last several years, even a mere maize self-sufficiency could be considered a "bumper harvest".

Yet to use this, or even a slightly higher yardstick of "bumper harvest" is to betray just how our horizons of expectation have lowered and narrowed as a result of the Mugabe regime's efficient orchestration of Zimbabwe's decline over the last few years.

With the world's pooled knowledge of farming methods, and all of Zimbabwe's natural and human advantages, merely having enough to eat is a very low standard by which to judge national achievement.

The Mugabe regime members have grown to love the word "drought" as an excuse for the many failures in agriculture. Yet there are countries in the world today which can, in comparison to us, be considered to be "permanent drought" lands, but which through seriousness of purpose and ingenuity have "bumper harvests" every year as we beg for food.

Our agricultural and general economic problems are due to far more than how much or how little precipitation occurs in a given year. They are problems of planning, lack of ability to set and stick to correct priorities, lack of pride and concern about the country's fortunes by the ruling authority.

Unlike some other countries, Zimbabwe's food insecurity is something to be ashamed of because it is man-induced, regardless of whatever symptoms we like to obsess about to justify our failures.

The converse is that for a country like Zimbabwe, basic food self-sufficiency in the year 2006 would not be anything to boast about. For your population to have enough to eat and plenty left over for storage or sale should be routine and ordinary for a nation with all of Zimbabwe's advantages.

While we think in terms of the "bumper harvest" of just having enough to eat, many other nations and regions of the world have long passed this most basic modern human milestone. They can take national food security for granted, either in terms of growing enough for their own needs, or in having dynamically productive economies that make importing whatever they cannot produce an easy and no-fuss exercise.

Neither applies to Zimbabwe, where the mere rumour of the availability of the staple mealie-meal at a store is enough to cause a stampede. This is how far we have been reduced in dignity despite occupying a part of the planet that by rights should be a cornucorpia of food, a virtually perpetual land of plenty regardless of season.

Having enough to eat is after all, not an end in itself. It is merely a means to other ends. It is only when your tummy is not gnawing with hunger pangs that one can best think, plan and work.

But because as a nation we have been forced to spend so much of our time, energy and thinking ability grappling with issues of food and other kinds of hunger, we have neither the time nor the energy to dream beyond that.

A disproportionate amount of our energies is spent on worrying about basics of life we should have nationally developed to a stage where we could take them for granted. We would then be able to dream of, and plan for higher accomplishments, individually and nationally.

If we, the ordinary citizens have been forced by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, to mainly think of the small and the immediate, that is no less true of the causers of our misery.

Listen to the things that the Mugabe regime members are concerned with, as shown by their own utterances.

Making threats against the citizens is a major pastime. Looting national resources is a major pre-occupation. Mistrust amongst themselves in their guilt is rife. Denying responsibility for the mess around them suffuses their whole consciousness. They constantly look over their shoulders in fear of what could happen to them if the rage in the land breaks free and finds expression, a consequence of the plague that they have wrought on the land.

They do not have enough confidence in their arguments and mental abilities to want to honestly and robustly debate issues with those who disagree with them. Instead, like the easily threatened bullies that they are, they seek to clamp down on dissent by bludgeoning those opponents.

When the regime's cabinet meets, all those little minds divide each other's pathetic mental outputs to produce more regression, rather than multiply and compound each other's efforts to produce positive energy, solutions to problems and growth.

Below the many obvious symptoms of Zimbabwe's national decline is the not-so-obvious cause of small, narrow minds at the helm of government.

In a way, the Mugabe regime often does hit its targets - because the targets it sets for itself and the nation are so low.

* Chido Makunike is a Zimbabwean writer based in Senegal.

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.

TOP