Our friend Kasukuwere and the people he speaks for have not made the mistake of ignoring that. Jacob Zuma and our other supporters now stress that we must have free and fair elections by the middle of next year. Even Kasukuwere might be prepared to allow that if he can push through his plan to totally “indigenise” the economy within 12 months. The most democratically-elected government can’t do much if someone else holds all the economic power.
Over the past 60 years, the British electorate saw an example of that principle: every time they elected a Labour government (except for Blair’s New Labour), the pound immediately dropped in value on the foreign exchange markets. The people with economic power might have lost an election, but they were warning the elected government what they could do if the government tried to push them. ZANU-PF, or the people who used to rely on that party to keep them in luxury, are going all out to put themselves above any elected government. All they have to do is to control all the farms, all the mines, all the factories and all the banks. Controlling the tourist trade and retail trade would give them even more power.
We saw the mess they made of the farms because they don’t have much idea of how to use them productively. Now they are making the same kind of mess of the mines and minerals they control. The banks are even more sensitive things to run. They’d make a terrible mess of them.
That leaves two possibilities if they succeed. The first is that each of them will end up as a bedraggled jongwe crowing on his own rapidly declining dungheap, but they are on top of the dungheap and will fight to the end to keep us from dislodging them. The second is that they continue relying on their friends in the east to keep them on top of the dungheap.
That means they would get the biggest share of what wealth is left in the country and give the rest of us as little as can they allow us. But in the second case, their Big Brother will provide whatever guns and economic pressure are needed to keep them on top of the dungheap. Big Brother doesn’t do that out of kindness. He’ll be laughing all the way to the Shanghai banks. That would be a new kind of imperialism that would leave many of us crying for the good old days of Cecil Rhodes and his followers down to Ian Smith. We know they weren’t good times, but Chinese rule would be worse.
There are signs that we may be able to save something from being grabbed or destroyed. The worst may not happen, but we have lost a lot already and probably can’t recover it all. We will not enjoy the prosperity we hoped independence would bring – but we might grow again more slowly.
Our success will be limited by the rich who hold more power worldwide than elected governments. It’s a rough world we live in, where the gap between rich and poor, whether in wealth or political power, has been growing since about 1970. The struggles we see against that now in Europe and America will be our struggle too.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis