The economic turmoil in Zimbabwe appears to have begun when an IMF and World Bank- inspired adjustment programme was implemented
Rehad Desai
News coverage from Zimbabwe has typically centred on the abuse of human rights unleashed following President Robert Mugabe’s defeat in the recent referendum. Coverage has therefore tended to produce more heat than light.
Perhaps more interesting is why and how Mugabe’s decline in popularity has spiralled into an all-time low and how that has given expression to an organised, urban-based political discontent.
Such questions lead us into the debate about the country’s recent history of economic policy and in particular the thorny issue of the seemingly huge divide between town and country. Informed responses raise the spectre of a prolonged period of turmoil.
Despite the landslide victory of Zanu-PF in 1980, their support base has always remained fragile. Zanu-PF’s guerrilla strategy rested almost solely on the support of the peasantry. However, the very nature of the peasantry, divided and atomised, results in an absence of self-organisation and activity among this class. Hence the need to rely on “war veterans” and the central involvement of the military in the recent land invasions.
An impasse has been reached with donors demanding the rule of law be operative, particularly in regard to elections, before the release of any funds for land compensation.
The historical backbone of African nationalist movements has been the black middle-class. This social class in Zimbabwe’s case have for numerous reasons always been weak and attempts to strengthen this group through Africanisation/indigenisation in the mid 1990s have failed miserably, costing the taxpayer millions of dollars. Mugabe’s base of social support in the urban areas has always therefore been relatively weak and hence the reliance on strong-arm tactics against any opposition that threatens his mantle.
Mugabe’s ability to keep international and local white capital happy, while encouraging the growth of an African business class, has led to a deepening of societal inequality. Since 1990 the urban workers and the rural poor have seen their standard of living drop consistently. Misgovernance, misguided economic policies and military adventures have added fuel to the fire that has seen the economy and Mugabe’s popularity go up in smoke.
The fire began with the institution of an International Monetary Fund/World Bank-inspired structural adjustment programme, with all its attendant economic medicine. What followed was the usual set of “adjustments”, that have led so many developing countries down the garden path of capitalist promise: privatisation, a limited role for the public sector in the provision of basic needs, export-led cash-crop growth, liberalisation of exchange controls and monetary policies, removal of basic consumption subsidies.
While Mugabe has been playing ball on most of the requirements, he has flip- flopped around fiscal discipline, largely to shore up his support base and to sustain his intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Liberalisation of exchange controls and the stock exchange allowed for unbridled financial speculation and a huge stock market crash. Overnight the stock market lost 40% of its value and its currency tumbled to an all-time low – a blow it has never been able to recover from. Hyperinflation followed Mugabe’s instruction to the Reserve Bank to simply print money – that it had no collateral to back up – in order to issue lump-sum payments out to the war veterans
The removal of food subsidies as demanded by the IMF for further loan support, in a context of rising inflation, provided the context where the trade union movement became the de facto opposition. It hesitantly became the critical conscience of the nation and in doing so was propelled into the limelight. A position that was solidified when it became the centrifugal force for the establishment of the National Constitutional Assembly, a coalition of 20 political and civil society groupings seeking an escape from the present quagmire.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) soon took centre stage when many of the groupings, through their overt and tacit support, marshalled themselves behind the launch of the new group – the central constituency and organising plank being the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
Zimbabwe is at a crossroads and, unfortunately, electoral victory for either side is unlikely to stem the political and economic crisis. What we are seeing now is a balance of powerlessness and it seems likely to continue.
On the one hand, you have Mugabe, who holds sway with the military and police, and the hierarchy in the state bureaucracy. On the other, you have the opposition who are morally hegemonic in the urban cities and towns. The peasantry seems to be caught between the two.
It seems that we have a situation where the one side cannot move without the blessing of the other. In the towns the MDC has the moral authority, while Mugabe holds the legal authority, a situation akin to that of dual power. Only a landslide victory for either side will tilt the balance. That, however, seems quite unlikely.
If Zanu-PF wins, instability, with the attendant repression and further mass strikes, are likely to remain the order of the day for some time to come. If the MDC wins, sources say Zanu-PF is bent on ensuring that the transition of power is chaotic and bloody. In addition, a victory for MDC will raise expectations among the workers for their pay and social demands to be met, a task that they will find hard to fulfil and maintain favour with the IMF and World Bank.
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