The late Ian Douglas Smith

By Vince Musewe

I HAVE just finished reading CG Tracey’s book — All for nothing — and I am quite impressed at how men and women like him gave all they had to build Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwe we have managed, in just 37 years, to decimate and create widespread poverty under the pretext of liberation. What the ruling ZANU-PF government has allowed to be done to the potential of this country is shameful and unforgivable.
Colonialism can never be defended by anyone of us blacks for it not only disrespected who we are, but it deliberately limited who we could become. However, I think we should also appreciate what we inherited from it.
Many of our politicians today benefitted tremendously from the efforts of good white men and women, who bucked the system and refused to be racists at their personal expense. Judith Todd’s name comes to mind.
It would be dishonest for us to underrate or dismiss the positive impact they had. They took personal risk to do what was right and unfortunately today we have very few such black men and women. Most of us have chosen the comfortable and convenient route of keeping quiet and even being praise singers while our country goes to the dogs. Oh what wretched pretenders and cowards we have in our midst! We shall have to re-write our history.
From reading CG Tracey’s book, I now have a deep appreciation of what it took to build the Zimbabwe which we took so much for granted at independence and proceeded to do nothing to build onto it. It is true indeed that some men and women are born to build while others are cursed to come merely to destroy what others have built.
Zimbabwe could be one of the most developed African countries today if we had kept the momentum created during the otherwise dreaded late Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence era. The agricultural and industrial base we inherited at independence was unbelievable. Our agricultural base and research capabilities were way ahead of all Africa. Today not one of our research stations is running and we have effectively lost more than 100 years of research and regressed so considerably that we will never catch up with the rest of the world. That is real disempowerment and I cannot fathom the audacity of anyone who claims that we have done well since 1980. It’s a lie. Zimbabwe’s potential has been destroyed and it’s not funny.
We will have to rebuild every sector of Zimbabwe with new energy and a fresh approach.
There is no argument that we must focus on agriculture infrastructure revival, but this time we must ensure that we create a symbiotic relationship between large farming concerns and small scale farmers, who are committed to be successful farmers. I predict that once our economy revives, a large number of those that are on land will prefer to go back into industry. This will release productive land for productive activity. We must establish industrial hubs that process food both for local consumption and also for exports.
Interestingly enough, Smith’s agricultural development model was based on value addition due to sanctions and here we are in 2017, blaming sanctions for everything instead of us taking it as an opportunity to redevelop our industrial base. But again that is typical of the liberation struggle generation, which chose to remain victims of history, while doing nothing to create a better future.
The interesting title of Tracey’s book — All for nothing — might, in the end, actually reflect the ruling party’s tenure at the helm of the country’s governance.
I suspect all the pain, all the struggle and destruction that has gone on will really achieve nothing in the end. How ironic!
I encourage students of history and economics to read this book because we can use Tracey’s energy and foresight to redevelop Zimbabwe. It has been done before and we can do it again.
However, what was critical during those times was that the Smith regime deliberately supported the emergence of a strong business sector unlike ZANU-PF, which has done all it can to banish our black business icons and has even dispossessed them of their assets. This is a crime, by any name.
In the Zimbabwe we want, we will create a government that understands that a strong private sector is good for the economy and also increases the ability of any government to fund development and provide social services through more taxes. The patronage system that we now have is cancerous and does not encourage the building of sustainable businesses.
Another Zimbabwe is indeed possible!
Vince Musewe is an independent economist and author based in Harare. You may contact him on [email protected]