Richard Saunders
South Africans played a leading role behind the scenes at last week’s 37th Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo – they built it.
This year the ZITF contracted SA’s Shocraft to erect, partition and disassemble exhibitors’ stands, to the detriment and vociferous complaint of local joiners who have traditionally built it.
But now, in a bid to move towards more modern displays, the uncompetitive locals have been dumped.
”If we had gone for a local contractor, it would have cost us more because the local prices are higher,” ZITF general manager Graham Rowe told the domestic press. ”Furthermore, local people cannot do this modular system.”
The theme for this year’s trade fair? ”Access Africa through Zimbabwe’s Open Invitation to World Trade.”
Zimbabwe is South Africa’s largest African trading partner and 11th worldwide. Trade continues to grow, but increasingly it is tilted in South Africa’s favour. Choked off from much of the market south of the Limpopo (the ongoing wrangle over clothing and textiles is an example), Zimbabwe’s borders have nonetheless been wrenched open by World Bank-inspired ”free trade”.
The latest example of the South African’s invasion of the Zimbabwean home market is representative of broader trends, which have seen local manufacturers reeling from cheap, export incentive-backed imports from across the border. Under growing pressure from local producers, government is desperate to unshackle itself from unsustainable ideological commitments to tariff-free trade.
In an ironic twist, President Robert Mugabe officially opened the Access Africa fair by decrying the unfair trade practices of unnamed countries, and announcing Zimbabwe would soon reintroduce a set of protective tariffs to ”level the playing field” and prevent the collapse of some sections of local industry.