ESAP destroyed many of the gains we had made since independence, in education, health services, industrial production and employment. Then came the 'Third Chimurenga' leading us into the wasteland we live in today. We know what that did to agricultural production and to the livelihoods of nearly 337,700 workers who were employed in 1999 on farms and in forestry.
They and their families, more than 1.5 million people in all, lost their homes, and the new farmers lost their skills.
ESAP brought the volume of industrial production in 2000 back to the 1980 level. The growing disorder associated with the land grabs brought it down to 81% of the 1980 level by August 2001, after which the CSO stopped publishing monthly figures.
According to a CZI survey, industry was using 50-60% of its capacity until Murambatsvina cut away the small informal workers who were vital to its smooth running. Capacity utilisation in the factories dropped to 36% in 2005, 19% in 2007 and 10% in 2008.
Things have improved a little but now locally made tools and good imported ones are rare. For locally made clothing, you go to the sweatshops. Much of the food in our supermarkets is imported. Mbare has been de-industrialised; where do you go now for repairs to anything from a shirt to a car?
We have been ruled too long by people who could not imagine being more than the jongwe on the dung heap, unchallenged boss of an impoverished slum, rather than the head of a family who can expect the family support him in retirement because he has worked to help them become independent.
The Zanu (PF) way has been to destroy what it can't control, so they had to keep looking for new businesses to take over because they sucked the old ones dry like a child with an orange, and now they want another orange. They don't understand production. They don't understand that real wealth comes from your own work, from making something.
So the indigenisers are trying to destroy what we have left. We used to export vanadium steel, which requires careful and difficult work; now ZISCO hardly produces pig iron. We dig ore out of the ground and sell it, for foreigners to make all the profit out of our metals. If they grab the mines, they will suck those dry too and we might as well go back to the Stone Age.
Will we grow any cotton next year? CottCo used to give growers their seed and other inputs, deducting the cost from the cotton crop when it was delivered to them. Last year our champion indigeniser Kasukuwere was encouraging farmers who had received inputs from CottCo or other companies to sell their crop to the Chinese Sino-Zimbabwe Development Company, who would pay them more than CottCo, because they had not paid for the inputs – but not enough to buy next season's inputs.
CottCo is cheated and possibly pushed out of business, the Chinese won't supply inputs, farmers can't grow cotton. You did know, of course, that China is one of the world's biggest cotton producers? They don't like competition.
If we don't stop them soon, we will find we are living in one great flea market where we can't afford the only zhing zhong trinkets that are on sale.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis