Thoughts of a farmer

EDITOR - The democratic and economic performance of post-colonial Africa is mixed and sometimes shameful, but the cataclysmic collapse of Zimbabwe has no precedent.

Future historians and political analysts will use Zimbabwe as a case study on how and why a country can go so wrong so quickly. We all bear some blame, how many of us protested the Gukurahundi slaughter?

Let us hope the same historians and analysts will site post Zanu (PF) Zimbabwe as a case study on recovery and rebuilding.

 

The national psyche is in a state of slumber. Do we understand what has to be put in place, and in what order, before we can claim to be on the road to recovery? Are we ready to accept and believe the future to be more important than the past? Unfortunately the donor aid syndrome hangs like a fog over Zimbabwe, blunting the edge of radical reform and risk taking.   

 

The world of surplus food and easy donor credit is no more and may be gone for ever.   For Zimbabwe the writing is on the wall: Produce or perish.   

 

We urgently need to attract Foreign Direct Investment to restore Commercial Agriculture and Commercialise Communal Agriculture. Only a diversified, market based, export orientated economy can generate the expected prosperity.

 

In 1980 we had the opportunity to develop into the first tiger economy in Africa. Narrow minded nationalism strangled this once in a lifetime opportunity. Let’s not make the same mistake. – BRUCE GEMMILL, by e-mail

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