Such a cornered snake can be extremely dangerous since it will utilize the little remaining venom in its body for maximum harm and will try to go down with its attackers. It has nothing to lose as the end in nigh.  

Such a cornered snake can be extremely dangerous since it will utilize the little remaining venom in its body for maximum harm and will try to go down with its attackers. It has nothing to lose as the end in nigh.

This is exactly what Zimbabwe has painfully experienced from Zanu PF since the March 2008 elections. After losing both the Presidential and Parliamentary elections in March 2008, former SA President; Thabo Mbeki, provided Zanu PF with a breath of fresh air when he insisted to the rest of the world that "there was no crisis in Zimbabwe". Zanu PF held on to the election results for six weeks, and in the meantime mobilizing the little remaining venom in its body to unleash one of the bloodiest election campaigns witnessed in recent times and eventually forcing the MDC to accept a power sharing deal.

However, irrespective of another breath of fresh air provided to Zanu PF by the inclusive government, like the wounded snake, Zanu PF fully understands that the end is nigh. The party has dismally failed to adopt to the realities of the new dynamic world order characterised by a new generation of global citizens with uniform aspirations for freedom, democracy, prosperity, and continuous human innovation and development. The global citizens are all linked together into an almost uniform culture via fast paced developments in communication technologies such as the Face book, Twitter, and a host of other global internet and communication links.

There is no difference now between any Western cities and cities in the Middle East, China and even the former communist Russia. Hence, Zimbabwe can not be an exception. Zimbabweans share the same aspirations as any other global citizens in America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Zanu PF which is fully dominated and controlled by its full complement of geriatric leaders knows that it will never be able to adopt and adjust to the new world realities. Former Zanu PF saviour, Prof Jonathan Moyo lamented this only last week when the newly announced Politburo reflected the world’s oldest consignment of leaders any political party in a democratic order has ever assembled. Zanu PF is plainly inefficient, and will never manage anything successfully from now on, a case in point is the Chiadzwa diamonds.

After Zanu PF destroyed the entire Zimbabwean economy, leaving the entire population on the verge of total starvation, The Lord Almighty answered the prayers of his crying Zimbabwean children, and like the manna that he provided to the Israelites in the desert, he provided Zimbabweans with the largest diamond finding in recent times in the same area that De beers had declared as uneconomical to operate a full scale diamond mine only 5 years back.

Through sheer incompetency and inefficiency, Zanu PF has failed to mine the God given diamonds for the benefit of the country. Zanu PF has failed to set up the simple administrative structures required to meet the Kimberly Process, when smaller countries with fewer educated citizens like Botswana and Namibia have easily set up the necessary structures to meet the Kimberly requirements. Even war ravaged Sierra Leone has successfully met the requirements of the Kimberly process.

With these insurmountable structural weaknesses, Zanu PF realizes that like the cornered wounded snake, the wounds inflicted on its body are too deep for it to survive. The only option left is to go down with its opponents and everyone else around. Zanu PF’s strategy now (which is fully being spearheaded by its President; Robert Mugabe) is to attack and destroy all the core values and virtues of the MDC, and ensure that the few achievements that the MDC has garnered so far in the inclusive government are all reversed.

Zanu PF destroyed the Zimbabwean economy through excessive government interference and over regulation of the economy. We all remember vividly the damage to the economy caused by the unreasonable price controls in a hyper inflationary environment which destroyed local production, and the fixing of the Zimbabwean Dollar at very unrealistic rates for the benefit of the few who could buy forex at the give away rates from the Reserve Bank but to the full detriment of the exporting industries.

The MDC espouses the virtues of the free market system and free enterprise, hence the recent economic gains experienced by the country within a very short period of the MDC joining the government. Zanu PF has now embarked on a strategy to destroy totally the roots of the MDC’s core values of free enterprise through the gazetting of the new empowerment regulations.

Zanu PF continued to implement the chaotic and never ending land reform programme through the violent occupation of farms even after a new dispensation had been ushered by the formation of the inclusive government in January 2009. The main objective of this exercise was to discredit any efforts by the MDC to restore economic order and business confidence. However, Zanu PF soon realised that land as a finite resource would not continue to provide political mileage anymore, especially after almost all the White farmers had now been evicted off their land. The MDC in government had successfully managed to convince the rest of the world to disregard the land issue but rather focus on other immense business and investment opportunities that Zimbabwe offers in mining, tourism, telecommunications, manufacturing and financial services.

As potential new multi-million investment deals were announced that could move the country forward by creating employment for Zimbabweans and providing new avenues for tax revenues for the fiscus, Zanu PF quivered from the real possibilities of being thrown into the dust bin of irrelevance in the Zimbabwean economic and social scene.

To ensure that Zanu PF remains relevant and continues to set agenda in Zimbabwe, the party then decided to throw its last dice two weeks ago when it gazetted the new empowerment laws without the full backing of the Cabinet. Zanu PF’s argument was that the laws were legitimate since they had been passed by the parliament in the previous Zanu PF controlled government. But then if all the laws that were passed by the previous parliaments in Zimbabwe are legitimate then why is there need to have a new inclusive government to usher in a new political dispensation in Zimbabwe? Why is there need to write a new constitution when all the laws are legitimate?

Should the inclusive government formed by the then Prime Minister of Zimbabwe; Robert Mugabe in 1980 with Zapu and some elements of the former Ian Smith regime, have continued to implement some notorious peaces of legislation such as the discriminative Group Areas Act because the law had been legitimately passed by the previous parliament? The reason why Zimbabwe moved into a new political dispensation in 1980 was because the previous political order was irregular and the laws passed during that irregular period could not be justified in a new dispensation. The same applies to the current inclusive government of national unity. It was born out of the realization that the period between the years 2000 and 2008 was politically irregular and hence a new political dispensation needed to be ushered in by the new inclusive government. Therefore, it would be retrogressive to insist on implementing highly contentious laws that were passed during an irregular political period.

From an economic point of view, if we surely do have qualifying indigenous business people in Zimbabwe with the necessary capital in hard currencies to buy 51% shareholding in all non-indigenous companies, why don’t these capable individuals set up new competing companies and enterprises? Surely the country would benefit more from new employment opportunities, a wider tax base, with new enterprises providing a new tax pool and competition on the market place providing better quality and cheaper products for consumers. Proponents of the empowerment laws have argued that in the mining sector mineral claims are all controlled by international firms, but the Great Dyke has not yet been exploited to even a tenth of its full potential.

If South African companies like African Rainbow Minerals can be granted exploration rights on the Great Dyke, why cant these indigenous people with capital be granted the same? Hwange Colliery which is one of the biggest high quality coal resource in Africa, is operating at a very low capacity because of under-capitalisation. Why then don’t we have theses well funded indigenous investors pouring money into Hwange and turning it around to one of the biggest producers of coal in Africa?

The same goes with Bindura Nickel mine, Kamative Tin mine, Mangura Copper and a host of other mining operations. Why were these capable indigenous people not invited to inject their capital into the Chiadzwa diamonds mining project? After all, the invited foreign South African joint venture partners are all not experienced in diamond mining. Is this not a reflection of double standards by our government leaders?

The biggest bank in Zimbabwe; CBZ, is owned by indigenous people, so why would indigenous people force their way into Standard Chartered bank or Barclays Bank when they can build better banks? Econent Wireless is now the biggest company on the ZSE and its wholly indigenous owned and managed, so why don’t these targeted indigenous people with money establish better companies as has been proven by the two companies mentioned and a host of other indigenous owned companies.

And who said that true empowerment of people only comes via ownership of companies? The American GDP figures for 2008 using the income method, reflects that the USA GDP of USD13.4 trillion consisted of 72% salaries and wages, profits only contributed 9.2% towards the GDP, with rents, interest and capital gains contributing the remaining 19%. Therefore, true broad based empowerment of a country’s citizens is through the provision of decent employment.

The country benefits more from the taxes on salaries and wages paid to its workers than from taxes paid on corporate profits. According to the World Bank, the highest levels entrepreneurs as a percentage of the total working population was recorded in Japan at 10.2%. This shows that in any country the best way to empower its citizens economically is through the provision of good quality jobs, only a small proportion of the population can be entrepreneurs and business owners.

One of the major economic problems facing Zimbabwe currently is the severe liquidity crunch that emanated from demise of the Zimbabwean Dollar and the concomitant move to international hard currencies as legal tender. What the country needs to solve the liquidity crisis in the absence of any international debt funding facilities, is to attract foreign capital investment inflows into the country to help resuscitate all the national savings that were lost when the Zimbabwean Dollar was shelved.

Therefore, wouldn’t it be more prudent for the country to prioritize the mobilization of international capital to help the country’s economy to recover and only then maybe start looking at issues surrounding the empowerment of indigenous people through company ownership? If one aims to empower as many people as possible, wouldn’t it make more sense to distribute a bigger and growing cake than to distribute a very small and shrinking cake?

The Zimbabwean economy is now one of the smallest economies in the SADC region (only bigger than Lesotho and Swaziland) when potentially it could be the second biggest economy after South Africa. Would our leaders not see that it would be in Zimbabwe’s best national interest to concentrate on growing the economy to help reduce the grinding poverty affecting the majority of our people and only worry about ownership of companies when the economy has fully recovered?

President Mugabe is fully aware of these facts, but as a leader who has hung on to his dear job for 30 years curtesy of his patronage system, the empowerment laws provide him with the glue to keep his restive supporters around him after the demise of the Reserve Bank as a patronage tool.

The empowerment laws will be used with the same effect that the land reform was applied to decimate the support the MDC enjoyed from the farm workers. This time round urban dwellers will bear the brunt of the empowerment legislation until they are forced to turn against the MDC. All the economic gains achieved so far will be reversed and frustrated citizens will paint the MDC with same Zanu PF brush.

If Zanu PF insists on implementing these destructive empowerment laws, then the MDC must seize this opportunity to set a new agenda for Zimbabwe. The MDC must immediately refuse to co-operate with Zanu PF in government as a result the latter’s insincerity. The MDC would then declare a deadlock over this issue and seek the intervention of SADC. After all, one of the main mandates of the GNU is the stabilization of the economy. How can this be achieved when Zanu PF is intent on destroying the little that is left of the Zimbabwean economy?

Further to that, the MDC must now switch its strategic imperatives to the setting up of structures necessary for holding decisive free and fair elections within a short period of time, as alluded to by President Jacob Zuma. There have been arguments from various MDC quarters that holding free and fair elections would be impossible without a new constitution being enacted in Zimbabwe.

This argument falls directly into the Zanu PF plot of deliberately delaying the constitutional development processes to ensure that no elections will take place in the near future. Even if eventually Zanu PF decides to move forward with the constitutional development process, the MDC will not gain much from that process as Zanu PF has already made it very clear that they will not accept any wholesale changes from the current Rhodesian-Lancaster House based constitution as reflected by their religious support of the so called Kariba draft, which the MDC was coerced to sign by Thabo Mbeki.

With the support of President Jacob Zuma and the SADC region, the MDC can fight for a framework which ensures the holding of free and fair elections in Zimbabwe without having to wait for the long and tedious uncertain route of constitutional reform.

The MDC can take advantage of the following two positive developments in GNU to build a frame work for free and fair elections:

1. The appointment of Commissioners of the Independent Electoral Commission is a positive development towards achieving the goal of holding free and fair elections. Most of the Commissioners are people of integrity with some degree of independence from the political parties. The Chairperson of the Commission; Judge Mutambenengwe, even though he has past links to Zanu PF, is independent from the Zanu PF patronage system, he works and lives in Namibia. This is a big contrast to his predecessor, who had strong links with the army and the Zanu PF government.

2. The appointment of Independent Commissioners for the Media Commission will ensure that other democratic voices are heard when other media organizations are licensed. The main sources of news dissemination in Zimbabwe are now the newspapers as most people do not watch or listen to ZBC electronic media channels. The main Zanu PF mouthpieces; the Herald and the Sunday Mail will be confined to the periphery once new vibrant independent newspapers starts circulating.

The MDC will then need to engage the SADC mediator; President Jacob Zuma and other SADC leaders to ensure that the following critical elements are build into the Zimbabwean electoral framework to ensure the holding of free and fair elections in Zimbabwe:

1. Like the first democratic elections in 1980, voters were allowed to use their national identity documents to cast their votes anywhere in the country. Voters can be prevented from multiple voting by using the more advanced versions of voters ink that is very difficult to wash away in a day. This will dissuade violence specifically targeted at rural constituencies as victims of violence can simply move to suffer areas to cast their ballots.

2. Zimbabwe could also move temporarily to a proportional representation electoral system which ensures that there is no need for drawing up contentious constituent boundaries, and every vote would count irrespective of where it is cast. This eliminates constituent related violence especially in the rural areas.

3. As in the South African Electoral Act, if there is clear evidence of electoral violence or fraud in a certain area, the Electoral Commission is empowered to disqualify the offending party in that particular area and the votes wont be counted. This discourages parties from using violence as a political tool as they would stand to lose votes if disqualified.

4. About three million Zimbabweans currently live in South Africa and another half a million in other Southern African countries such as Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Mozambique. The MDC should fight to ensure that all these Zimbabweans are allowed to vote. These countries do not have sanctions against any Zimbabwean political leaders, who are all free to go to these countries to address the Zimbabwean voters on their political programmes.

The MDC should not be deflected by the Zanu PF assertion that because its leaders are not allowed into Western countries therefore all exiled Zimbabweans must not vote. For the sake of progress it may be necessary not to fight for the voting rights of Zimbabweans living in the Western countries for now, but highly necessary to fight for the voting rights of those leaving in neighbouring countries. After all those Zimbabweans living in Western countries are a very small proportion of those leaving is Southern African countries.

5. The MDC would also fight to have observers allowed in from all reputable international organisations including the United Nations. International media organisations such the BBC, CNN, SKY and others should all be allowed to operate in the country freely during the election period.

The few reforms that Zanu PF has already conceded so far, are probably all what the party will give even if we wait patiently until 2013. The long going and continuous frustrating negotiations by the three parties attests to this. The longer the MDC waits the more the damage Zanu PF will continue to inflict on the country.

Threats by President Mugabe and his mines minister; Obert Mpofu that they will pull out of the Kimberly process and sell their diamonds clandestinely elsewhere should be taken seriously. Zanu PF could now be aiming to weaken the MDC by destroying the economy through the empowerment legislation, but at the same time strengthening its own hand through clandestine diamond sales revenues.

What is surprising is that whereas President Mugabe has strongly gone public in his support of the empowerment regulations, which immediately destroyed all the hard work which had been undertaken by the GNU to improve Zimbabwe’s image as an investment destination, the Prime Minister has not personally spoken strongly against these destructive measures. Is the MDC now suffering from battle fatigue? The time is now for the MDC to take a decisive stand and start plotting the road map for the country to follow as the majority political party in Zimbabwe.

(Majaji Tirivanhu is a Johannesburg based financial and economic Analyst)