There are several ways to commit suicide. One is just to do it, another is to threaten it repeatedly, while a third is to mount half-hearted attempts at it. If you do the latter two often enough, people soon discount you in anticipation of your final departure.
Zimbabwe seems to be alternating between the latter two. It has made a number of inconclusive attempts at self-destruction in recent years, and President Robert Mugabe has become a shrill exponent of the unproven I’ll-hurt-you-by-hurting-myself approach.
The latest instance of this behaviour came last weekend when Nathan Shamuyarira, Zimbabwe’s minister of commerce and industry and a former academic whose intelligence some once admired, announced that the government was breaking its relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. He did so after a meeting of the ruling Zanu-PF party’s politburo, presided over by Mugabe, which had found unacceptable the conditions the institutions were laying down for lending to Zimbabwe.
It was an exquisitely chosen moment to break off ties. The Zimbabwe dollar has depreciated 65% over the past 16 months. Inflation is running at more than 50%. The country is fighting a war it cannot afford to prop up a brothelkeeper-turned-dictator in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And, at the time Shamuyarira spoke, Zimbabwean officials were engaged in delicate negotiations with the IMF and the World Bank, and had reason to be cautiously optimistic about the outcome.
What had irked Mugabe and his allies in the politburo was that the World Bank had said it would support only one of two big electrical generation projects planned in the country. The bank, like many local economists, argued the cash-strapped country could not afford both. Politely, the World Bank did not say that the deal it had declined to back reeked of corruption, backhanders and unexplained preferences. And just more than a month ago, the IMF suspended the transfer of more than US$53-million to Zimbabwe to help it balance its foreign payments.
The confidence of the IMF, the World Bank and business generally in Zimbabwe has been seriously undermined by a lack of transparency in the government’s management of the economy as well as by rampant corruption. According to a study commissioned by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, corruption of more than Z$17,5-billion occurred in the 30 months to December last year.
Moreover, Mugabe has shown himself to be unpredictable and capricious. He has done repeated somersaults over, among other things, whether or not his government will pay commercial rates of compensation for farming land appropriated for settlement.
His changes of mind have played havoc with the country’s agricultural sector, the largest export earner. What farmer plants fresh crops if he doesn’t know whether or not he will own his farm in three months’ time? What bank gives a farmer a loan in the face of such uncertainty? What agricultural equipment supplier stocks up his shops? What equipment manufacturer maintains his production in such an atmosphere? What farm or industrial worker keeps his or her job?
Shamuyarira blithely claimed at the weekend that Zimbabwe could do without the IMF and the World Bank. “The economy will definitely survive without [them],” he said.
Oh yes?
No, said Herbert Murerwa, Zimbabwe’s finance minister. Murerwa knew that, unless Zimbabwe had a constructive relationship with the IMF and the World Bank, the country would find it extremely difficult to raise capital anywhere in the world. And, that being so, Murerwa did not feel like leading the country to economic suicide.
In a hastily mounted and eventually successful counter-offensive over the weekend, Murerwa publicly denied the country had cut ties with the two international institutions. For his part, Shamuyarira came around to claiming he had been misquoted – an excuse nobody with any knowledge of the local political scene seems to believe. For Shamuyarira had expressed sentiments he and Mugabe are well known to share.
So, by Monday, Zimbabwe had returned from the brink again. It had threatened suicide and failed to live up to its word.
The effect, however, will be much the same as if it had jumped into the abyss. Shamuyarira’s statement just added to an overwhelming sense among businesspeople, workers, investors and the international financial institutions that Mugabe, his party, his government and the country are headed inexorably for self-destruction.
There is sufficient visceral hatred of the IMF and the World Bank in South Africa to expect that a few local fists have been waved about in support of Shamuyarira’s and Mugabe’s hubris. Up-yours resentment of the kind to which Mugabe is prone, though seldom attractive, seems to have its satisfactions for some.
It is highly unlikely, however, that Zimbabwe’s poor can derive anything like the same satisfaction from it. Poverty may well be a virtuous state. Starvation may even put you or me on the path to heaven. But, generally speaking, most of us avoid hell on earth if we can – even if promised a divine or proletarian paradise as compensation. Zimbabweans, on the basis of my six years spent there after independence, are no different.
There are two particularly perverse aspects to the ordeal Mugabe is now visiting on Zimbabwe. Underlying his reasoning is a conviction that self-destruction provides Zimbabwe with the only path to self-respect and maintenance of its independence. This is a variant of the infamous reasoning of a United States commander in the Vietnam War who said: “We had to destroy the village to save it.”
Secondly, we can be sure Mugabe will never hold himself accountable for the destruction he induces. Instead he – and many a commentator who should know better – will blame the World Bank/IMF/ colonialism/Cecil John Rhodes/the church/capitalism/imperialism/neo-
liberalism/Milton Friedman/you name it. The subtext of all this blaming will remain unacknowledged: that Africans are incapable of assuming responsibility for our plight. That is the disease that has crippled African nationalism as a force for progress. We will move forward only when we turn it on its head: when we take responsibility for where we are, how we got here, where we want to be, and how we plan to get there.
The alternative leads to Mugabe’s cul-de- sac: to save ourselves we must destroy ourselves – and blame someone else for our decision to do so. It is a paradox that may appeal to the mad, but that is no reason why it should convince the rest of us.