Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe denounced the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday evening, calling dependence on the crisis lender and other donors tantamount to economic slavery, reducing African countries to beggars.
”We don’t have to go to IMF for that, even to any European donor, for what we can do between and amongst ourselves,” Mugabe told a business meeting organised in Windhoek by the Namibian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
”And when we start doing it on our own, you’ll see them coming, saying ‘Ah, you have a factory here. We want to assist you.’ Then, if we want a partner, the partner must come on our terms, because then we will have the capacity to do things on our own.”
”When we don’t have that capacity, then we are like economic slaves. We go begging. There are still countries in Africa which go begging for money in order to pay their civil servants, and they got independent in the ’60s,” he said.
Citing non-payments of arrears, the IMF has just frozen support for Zimbabwe, which has now reached the world’s highest inflation rate at 1 600 per cent annually.
Human rights activists held a small demonstration outside the Zimbabwean embassy on Wednesday morning in Windhoek to protest Mugabe’s rule.
”The main reason for this protest is to add to the ever-growing international outrage over the dangerous human-rights, humanitarian and human security situation, which is prevailing in Zimbabwe,” Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights said in a statement.
The protesters called on Mugabe and his government to ”respect the work of human-rights defenders, restore the operation of independent print and electronic media, allow all legitimate political opposition parties the room to operate, restore respect for the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary and present the requisite constitutional amendment before the nation as a whole for a referendum.”
The 83-year-old Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, arrived on Tuesday in Namibia for a state visit.
Mugabe called for greater cooperation between Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, a thinly veiled criticism of South Africa and its continuing economic dominance through the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu).
”One subject that has been lingering on our agenda in SADC is the one that has to do with tariffs, reducing tariffs at what rate and when do we expect to get to zero tariff level?” Mugabe asked.
”Usually where there is bigness and largeness, there is usually a claim-inherited, historical claim — for the large partner to want to continue to be large and also to want the small ones to continue to be small. I’m not saying this is what is happening.”
Mugabe further called for greater regional cooperation in trade and sharing of expertise that would allow the region to ”add value” instead of simply selling primary commodities including beef, leather, fruit and minerals.
During the official gala dinner he hailed his land and resettlement policy as ”completed successfully,” adding that Britain and the United States had wanted to punish Zimbabwe for ”daring to take our destiny into our own hands”.
The support Mugabe voiced for Namibia ”as you tackle the mammoth task of land reform in your own way” brought no response by Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba.
Pohamba, who was democratically elected in 2004, called for greater ”efforts to strengthen democratic governance and the rule of law for a more peaceful continent”.
While having been given the red-carpet treatment on his arrival, Mugabe is not seen to be as close an ally of Pohamba as he was of former Namibian president and liberation struggle comrade Sam Nujoma.
Namibia’s human-rights groups and business community have criticised the Mugabe visit as ”sending the wrong signal” to a world that is taking an increasingly critical approach to Mugabe’s regime.
Political observers hope that during official talks, Pohamba will try to influence Mugabe to step down come elections next year, in the kind of quiet diplomacy for which leaders like South African President Thabo Mbeki have been criticised.
Following a visit to a diamond-polishing factory and a meeting with local businesses, Mugabe is to leave on Thursday for Namibia’s east coast to view dry-dock facilities at Walvis Bay harbour and see a fish-processing plant before returning Friday to Zimbabwe.
‘The nation will be in darkness’
Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank governor, Gideon Gono, told a parliamentary committee that he was struggling to keep the country’s electricity on and the air force aloft. He admitted he had no funds to buy police vehicles or print passports and that unless drastic action was taken on rampant inflation, Zimbabwe could slump ”to levels never dreamt before”.
Scant hope of better times was offered by Gono when he came to the parliamentary committee on defence and home affairs on Tuesday to respond to appeals from the police, army and other departments for foreign currency to buy vehicles, vital equipment and basic materials.
Gono is favoured by Mugabe for his optimism, so many Zimbabweans will have been surprised by his bleak assessment, published in the state Herald newspaper on Wednesday.
He told the parliamentary group that he received desperate calls daily from state food and petrol distributors, the national airline, and the state railway and power utility — all demanding hard currency for imports. He said an official from the power utility called at dusk saying: ”If you don’t give us money the nation will be in darkness.”
But he said the bank’s priority was to allocate hard currency for imports of maize, Zimbabwe’s staple grain, to avert a looming food crisis. He admitted currency had been diverted from almost every government department to buy food.
The committee chairperson, Claudius Makova, of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, said its investigations showed that the police needed more than 15 000 vehicles but had 1 500. He said the air force needed $2-million to keep planes in the air.
The passport office had earlier said it had a backlog of 300 000 applications but could not produce any because it had no paper or ink. It is resorting to issuing emergency travel documents on plain paper.
Gono said he did not have the foreign currency to pay those urgent bills. He said Zimbabwe needed more than $2,5-billionn ”to function well” but he did not know where he could find the hard currency.
”If we were talking about local currency, I would say, ‘Don’t worry, in the next 30 minutes we will print money,”’ he said, but added that he could not print US dollars or British pounds.
Gono blamed people who had taken over white-owned farms for failing to produce food. ”There are some people who have become professional land occupiers, vandalising equipment and moving from one farm to another,” he said.
Tobacco exports were the nation’s main hard currency earners before the land seizures. Tobacco production this year is forecast at one-fifth of the 1999 level and food output is down to one-third.
The economy would fall to ”levels never dreamt before” unless there was an immediate wage and price freeze, he said.
In a sign of growing public impatience, dozens of people were arrested yesterday for defying a police ban on demonstrations to protest at hardship and repression.
The National Constitutional Assembly said many of those arrested were assaulted but it vowed to continue demonstrating. ”We believe that demonstrating for a new Constitution is a genuine cause that cannot be blocked by a corrupt police force whose mandate is merely that of protecting a failed regime,” said the group, which campaigns for constitutional reform.
Zimbabwe’s main labour body, the Zimbawe Congress of Trade Unions, confirmed on Wednesday that it would hold a general strike on April 3 and 4 to protest at the hardships it blamed on the government. It rejected Gono’s call for a wage freeze, saying poor and hungry workers could not accept that.
”People are hungry and they are fed up. The terrible economy is creating a growing mood of desperation,” said John Makumbe, a political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. ”We have seen battles between police and protesters and this could grow.” – Guardian, Sapa-DPA