SW Radio Africa recently interviewed Tony Reeler head of the Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) about the Zimbabwean crisis and what will resolve it. Read more here and below is an excerpt:

GONDA: And what are the main concerns of the people on the ground, especially the people that participated in the survey?

REELER: Well we asked them a very interesting question. We asked them what is the way forward? And we gave them a choice of – what are the three most important things for you to solve the problems with Zimbabwe? And that came back in rank order, three things. They said Number One – an end to violence, Number Two – free and fair elections and Number Three – democracy and those are very important things coming from ordinary citizens because that’s what has continuously emerged from the Afro-barometer surveys over the last five or six years – is they show that Zimbabweans have a very acute understanding of what democracy is, its manifestations and that they also have a very acute understanding that they don’t have a democracy.

So what you can see is Zimbabweans want a solution, they want a solution in a particular way, they want elections that are non-violent that restore democracy essentially. I think they also said there has been some improvement due to the inclusive government and the Global Political Agreement and they saw some improvements in health and a few improvements in education but they also saw many areas in which there was no improvement whatsoever. What we are hearing from discussions within communities are people who are deeply concerned about whether this Global Political Agreement and the inclusive government is working and people who are very concerned that there is a resolution to this crisis. And I think what people are saying is they understand quite clearly that the solution to a political crisis will be an election. That’s the Zimbabwean perspective. In other countries what used to happen was that you used to have military coups or rebellions as we’ve had to do to get rid of white colonial power here but Zimbabweans are saying they put their faith in an electoral process. That’s what they hope will resolve the crisis and clearly what that means is, is that people’s votes translate into the reality they expect and the majority of people, when they vote, expect a particular outcome, that they will in fact elect the party of their choice.

I went to get my hair done yesterday, nothing fancy, just cornrows to get through the rest of the winter. Not being patient I knew that sitting in the hairdresser’s chair for close to three hours wouldn’t be easy. But I felt that the end justified the wait and the pain of having someone tugging at my scalp. I wanted a change. As I sat, watching the chaotic black-brown bush on my head become tame and transform into something new and orderly, it occurred to me that change is gradual, and sometimes painful. As much as I wished it were, change can never be an event, it is a process.

We are in the process of change. It’s difficult to tell what kind of change from one day to the next, or even if there is progression, particularly when sitting in the dark with a half cooked meal during winter.  But there has been change.

The signing of the GPA was met with much jubilation, celebration and most importantly hope. It restored many Zimbabweans faith in their country and to some extent their leaders. Suddenly there was talk of a working economy, and things like democracy and rule of law returning to Zimbabwe. At the time, that hope was essential, but the faith was misplaced. The GNU was not meant to be the event at the end of the process: it is the process itself. The Inclusive Government isn’t everything: it is not efficient, it is not incorrupt, it is not a democratic dispensation, and it is not a perfect solution.

But it is a solution. Almost two years after the GPA has been signed, we are very articulate about what the Inclusive Government is not, and what it has failed to do. A survey taken by the Research and Advocacy Unit late last year posed the question ‘Do you feel that the GNU has improved your life?’

Significantly most people answered no.

Perhaps the entire perspective on the GNU and its purpose is wrong. It was never meant to be a lasting solution to a problem that took several decades to create. It was supposed to be a vehicle for change. Not just political change, but also change within ourselves. This change is indeed slow, and often painful. Never the less it is a change.

This statement from Amnesty International summarises a number of the challenges facing the Constitutional Parliamentary Select Committee (COPAC) outreach process which began last week.

Restrictions of fundamental freedoms undermining credibility of constitution making process

Arbitrary arrest and detention as well as violence against human rights and political activists risk undermining the credibility of Zimbabwe’s just started constitution making process, led by the Constitutional Parliamentary Select Committee (COPAC).

All parties in the unity government should respect and protect the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly and ensure that everybody has unfettered access to COPAC outreach meetings. Amnesty International also urges Zimbabwe’s security agents to strictly observe Article XIII of the Global Political Agreement which requires state organs and institutions to be impartial in the discharge of their duties.

Amnesty International’s calls follow reports of arbitrary arrest and detention, and beatings of civil society monitors working under the Independent Constitution Monitoring Project, which is jointly run by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, Zimbabwe Peace Project and Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.

On Sunday 27 June, three civil society monitors, Paul Nechishanu, Artwel Katandika and Shingairayi Garira were taken by ZANU-PF supporters to Scarffel Farm in Makonde district (Mashonaland West province) and beaten with logs.  Garira sustained injuries to his eardrum while Nechishanu and Katandika suffered head injuries.  The attackers also took the monitors’ mobile phones and money.  Two of the phones were later returned to them by the ZANU-PF supporters.

The beating of the monitors follows the arrest of another team of monitors – Godfrey Nyarota and Tapiwa Mavherevhedze, and their driver Cornelius Chengu – by police in Mutare on 24 June. The three activists were at Mukunu North Primary School in Mutare North constituency, monitoring the on-going constitution making process.  They were charged under Section 81(3) of the Access to Information and protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) for practicing journalism without accreditation. They were released on $20 bail and remanded to 9 July. Reports indicate that the police arrested the three monitors in Mutare at the instigation of a well known ZANU-PF activist and a member of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veteran Association.

Another activist in Mutare, Enddy Ziyera, the provincial coordinator of the independent monitoring project, was detained for several hours and released without charge on 25 June after bringing food for the three activists in detention.

Again on 25 June, in Marondera (Mashonaland East province), three Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) activists, Rodreck Shamu, Themba Musimara and another man only identified as Mukunyaidze were taken by unidentified state security agents.  They were later found detained at Marondera police station and are yet to be charged.

Background

Consultations for a new constitution are provided for under Article VI of Zimbabwe’s Global Political Agreement (GPA) which explicitly states ‘the fundamental right and duty of the Zimbabwean people to make a constitution by themselves and for themselves’ and provides for the people of Zimbabwe ‘to hold such public hearings and such consultations as it may deem necessary in the process of public consultation over the making of a new constitution for Zimbabwe.’

Over the past six months, Amnesty International has been receiving reports of intimidation in rural areas where villagers were threatened with violence if they do not support ZANU-PF’s position on the new constitution.  Initially, the threats were meant to intimidate villagers into endorsing the heavily criticized Kariba draft constitution. The Kariba draft constitution, which was agreed in 2007 by the former ruling party ZANU-PF and the two formations of the MDC without public consultation, has been strongly criticized by civil society organizations as an attempt by the parties to impose a constitution on the population.

Here is another article from Rejoice Ngwenya entitled The Folly of African Entrepreneurship:

Zimbabwe, like most developing African countries burdened with the yoke of authoritarian oppression, force-feeds citizens with policy prescriptions only meant to satisfy political egos of ruling elite.  Imposing government ministries of ‘small and medium enterprises’ and ‘indigenisation’ would not suddenly turn Zimbabwe into an industrialised country.

Similarly, investing millions of United States Dollars in education infrastructure to offer business administration training would by itself not achieve much in economic growth.  It is in this context that my cousin who teaches block release students of Masters of Business Administration at a derelict Zimbabwean state university in the midlands city of Gweru makes a stunning observation about the folly of African entrepreneurship.  Notwithstanding the exploits of world-renown African businesspersons like Mo Ibrahim [Sudan], Patrice Motsepe [South Africa], Strive Masiyiwa [Zimbabwe] et al, there is a tendency for emerging economies to over emphasise the virtues of trading as symptomatic of entrepreneurial instincts in Africans.  Vast flea and vegetable markets in Cairo, Casablanca, Accra, Nairobi, Lusaka, Harare and Johannesburg cannot be credible litmus test for successful business, because, according to my cousin, they do not contribute to real economic development. This school of thought is supported by 20th Century economist Joseph Schumpeter.

Zimbabwean ministers of ‘small enterprises’ and ‘indigenisation’ – Sithembiso Nyoni and Saviour Kasukuwere respectively – epitomize the flourishing species of authoritarian regime praise singers who perpetuate the lie that simply buying and selling amounts to entrepreneurship.  Ironically, it is dictators that buy votes by deceiving citizens into non value adding, non innovative ‘income generating’ activities only meant to fill up ballot boxes. Wikipedia isolates Israel Kirzner as one in a few economists who associates entrepreneurship with innovation or value addition.  Importing clothes and cars from Dubai and disposing them off to Harare consumers has no value addition. Countries like Zimbabwe, Swaziland and the Democratic Republic of Congo are politically unstable, with a productive industry decimated by decades of senseless dictatorship, yet their economies are said to have ‘survived’ because of ‘enterprising and resilient citizens’. What a load of hogwash!

Says Wikipedia: “The entrepreneur is widely regarded as an integral player in the business culture of American life, and particularly as an engine for job creation and economic growth.” A country develops while its economy grows when citizens create new products and services that result in more people being employed, consuming and adding to the national fiscus. During electoral campaigns, dictators like Robert Mugabe splash out computers, buses and money to political sympathisers under the guise of ‘economic development and empowerment’. As a result of this patronage, the country fails even to produce cooking oil, soap and shoes because there are no efforts to encourage sustainable innovation. My cousin therefore is correct that Zimbabwe, like most African countries suffering from authoritarian dictatorship, will remain underdeveloped until we transform our political thinking.

No doubt the MBA students he encounters are victims of an education system that was meant to produce workers rather than innovators. It is a poisonous system that infects even financial institutions like Standard Bank Zimbabwe who seek survival from customers with ‘proven’ salary and wages rather than ‘risky’ entrepreneurship.  There is a link between sustainable entrepreneurship and financing, and this chain translates into long term survival of the banking sector.  In a 2009 paper entitled “Banking Deregulations, Financing Constraints and Firm Entry Size” Harvard academics William R. Kerr and Ramana Nanda quote Michelacci and Silva who stress that “better financial access explains why local entrepreneurs operate larger firms…”  In other words, the nexus between finance, entrepreneurship, sustainability and long term growth is an undeniable fact of life.

The Standard Bank, like most conservative ‘orthodox’ commercial banks, has this skewed policy imprint confusing innovation with entrepreneurship. And for good reason. The default rate for unsecured loans has been known to bring down the banking sector. Yet Kerr and Nanda have it on good authority that restrictive regulations in financing innovation are a negative force in the economic growth projectile. This is why it is critically important for us Africans to understand and appreciate the meaning and implication of true entrepreneurship. We must exorcise the demon afflicting banks like Standard that only salary cheques are safe as collateral in securing loans.

At one time in the early part of this decade, Zimbabwean banks or more specifically the financial sector, was registering phenomenal ‘growth’, yet citizens were getting poorer and GDP was shrinking. This was prelude to the ‘annexation’ of banks by Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono, and eventually others collapsed under accusation by [Gono] of perpetuating impropriety.  It was during the same period that inflation spiralled to six digits while Zimbabwe’s productive sector almost disappeared. But the strange phenomenon was of a booming ‘entrepreneurship’ in cross border trade, flourishing flea markets and countless trips between China, Dubai and Zimbabwe. In rural areas, young men were digging up the country side to extract and sell gold. Something was clearly wrong.

I therefore conclude this treatise by reasserting the need for us Africans to create new social and business solutions as an entry point to entrepreneurship. Deficits in public communication, governance, food, education, health, industry, commerce and infrastructure are an ideal opportunity to innovate for profit. This is what drives industrialisation, not selling jeans at open markets or vegetables and curios along the freeways. Moreover, financial institutions like the conservative Standard Bank of Zimbabwe defeat the cause of entrepreneurship by not promoting individual inventors but relying on wage and salary remittances. At a time when national productive capacity is below 40%, it is difficult to perceive how a serious bank can ignore entrepreneurs and non-profit organisations on its menu of attracting business. In its haste to pour scorn on ‘flea market entrepreneurs’, the bank has adopted collective condemnation even of those self-employed consultants  who sustained it with valuable foreign currency deposits when the Zimbabwe dollar was toilet paper.  What is now urgent is to overhaul Zimbabwean national economic policy to foster a commitment to innovation rather than flea markets and Chinese toy shops.

The role of religion in economic development was the title of the discussion I was at yesterday. The gentleman presenting wanted to highlight how religion and economic development are interlinked and how they affect each other.

First we looked at how economic development affects religion. There are four factors that come into play education, value of time, life expectancy and urbanization. Economic development will likely lead to higher education and with increase in education there is a desire to explain things scientifically. A less developed country would explain any situation using God and religious beliefs. The probability of explaining things using God in a developed country becomes less. People tend to use scientific terms to explain day to day living on any challenge that might come their way. For instance in a developed country if there is famine the explanation would be scientific but in a not so developed country famine might be explained as the anger of God or a lesson that we need to learn from gods especially in our African context.

Then religion plays a pivotal role in the way of our thinking. Value of time in developing countries makes it hard for people to seek religion. People would rather be at work than in church. Thus economics or being more economically developed will affect the way people view religion.

Knowing the life expectancy in any country can also contribute to how economic development can make it hard to find a community seeking for God. In America the life expectancy is around 75 to 80 years and if a male aged 30 still has his grandparents alive he sees no rush of going to church. On the other hand in a less developed country with a life expectancy of 35years like in Zimbabwe, people would rather go to church and prepare to go to heaven.

Urbanization brings many social platforms in a country as it gets developed. Going to church is among many of the options that people choose from. Urbanization brings in nightclubs, movies and many other social spaces. In a less developed country the only social space available to people in that country might be the church or other religious settings.

We then looked how religion affects economic development. Religion is attractive to higher educated societies. There are all these people trying to explain the existence of God, explaining the existence of God takes philosophers. It takes people who have a high education to do that. Then religion will affect economic development through education. Most religions value education, as you have to read the Bible or the Koran. Religious beliefs reinforce religious factors like hard work, honesty, thrift and value of time. So it is true to say that religion does affect economic development. The more people are taught in their religious circles to value time, to be hard working, the more a country can be economically developed.

One of my favourite feminist quotes comes from Mary Wollstonecroft and it says “I do not wish them (women) to have power over men but over themselves” because I believe that is the essence of women empowerment.

I never resonate with the preoccupations of some activists with ‘demanding’ that men create spaces for women in politics, in education etc… the whole idea of creating quota systems sits rather uncomfortably with me.

For what a man gives to a woman, he has the power to withhold at some point and there is no empowerment derived from being ‘given’ – empowerment only comes with what one achieves, attains and realizes from their own efforts.

I don’t doubt women’s capabilities, potentials and talents – I don’t think they need men to ‘liberate’ them – I think they can pretty much liberate themselves – if they acquire education, work their way to the top, begin to actively participate in the highest echelons of decision-making, policy-formulation and governance.

In 2007, when I was at the University of Zimbabwe, we were witnesses to the first ever female candidate to run for the powerful (and often violently contested) post of Secretary General of the Students’ Executive Council, Maureen Kademaunga.

She won the elections in that year because she managed to galvanize the female students into one cohesive, critical mass of voters and became the most powerful student in the country at the time because student activism was very robust, radical and influential.

I have come to believe that what women need is to have power over themselves and that power manifests in overturning the status quo whenever it is employed to oppress, marginalize or discriminate against us.

Recently there was a landmark passport ruling by a Supreme Court Justice Rita Makarau ruled in favour of Margret Dongo who, two years after filing a constitutional challenge (seeking the, nullification of certain provisions of the Guardianship of Minors Act, which she claimed were discriminatory against married women who were not regarded as natural guardians of their children) finally triumphed.

I want to believe that having a female Justice presiding over the case had a lot to do with the verdict; I want to believe having a determined woman who knows her rights had a lot to do with Margeret Dongo daring to challenge the status quo.

I want to believe that the results of that ruling, which will impact favourably on married women were wrought through the actions of fellow women and that no man played a part in ridding us of that cumbersome piece of discriminatory legislation. I want to believe that these are just examples of women exercising power (not over men) but over themselves, over their lives and ultimately over the system of patriarchy that informs the conditions of their oppression, marginality and discrimination.

So, I too, wish that we as women, may choose to have power over ourselves, choose to exercise that power and choose to liberate and empower ourselves.