Joram Nyathi
When President Mugabe assumed the chairmanship of Sadc in August 2014, the summit ran under the theme: “Sadc Strategy for Economic Transformation: Leveraging the Region’s Diverse Resources for Sustainable Economic and Social Development through Beneficiation and Value Addition”.
In his acceptance speech, the President noted the following points, which related to the theme of the summit: “Our region has abundant resources, which resources, instead of being sold in raw form, at very low prices, must instead be exploited and beneficiated in order to add value and cost to those products which we eventually export.
This process should assist us in our efforts to industrialise, and in turn, increase employment opportunities for our people.”
He urged the regional bloc to “wean itself from exporting raw materials, but instead seek to create value chains that lead to the exportation of finished goods.
I am confident, that in our discussions, we will lay a foundation for the necessary strategies, as well as a plan of action on the beneficiation and value addition of our natural resources.
“The region seems to have slowed down on market integration, and instead our focus is now more on the ongoing consolidation of the Sadc Free Trade Area.
We, however, remain concerned about the persistently skewed trade imbalance among member-states, which further justifies the pursuance of robust industrialisation policies across the region, if we are to create jobs and curb labour migration.”
I recalled these exhortations and anxieties in light of the current protest in the region, especially by South African companies and business people following Zimbabwe’s decision two weeks ago to control finished goods which could be imported under the open general import licence.
At the time, President Mugabe lamented that 60 percent funding for Sadc programmes came from so-called cooperating partners, thus reducing the region’s influence in terms of ownership and priorities.
The belief was that if Sadc reviewed its Regional Indicative Strategic Development Programme to prioritise industrialisation, this would in turn fast-track the process of beneficiation and value addition of raw materials, thus enabling the region to earn more from the export of finished products.
This was obviously a challenge directed at those in charge of our industry and commerce.
In Zimbabwe in particular, the message coming out is one of capacity utilisation languishing at a miserable 34 percent. We have regressed.
There is resistance to the whole idea of beneficiating locally. We are waiting for foreign direct investment to do the magic trick, the same unpredictable dependency we should be weaning ourselves of.
[One can’t miss the painful paradox where every businessman seems convinced the proverbial elephant in the room standing in the way of the almighty white saviour is the very policies which seek to give the black man real economic power. In this scheme, a black man’s empowerment starts and ends with a job, not control, much less, ownership. It’s there in the mind, embedded deeply.]
If the region has performed better since that summit, those leading the industrialisation process are not beating their own chest loud enough.
Which would be unfortunate. What is fairly evident though is that a number of countries in the region and beyond are reeling from a cooling Chinese economy, leading to reduced import of raw materials.
That has in turn led to reduced revenue inflows for exporting countries, and consequently downgraded economic growth projections.
In short, we remain with our abundant natural resources over which we have very little control or influence regarding export prices because we are not adding value.
Those who want them choose and decide what they want to pay for. Out of necessity we must give them away, along with potential job creation and improved earnings.
Africa will never be free as long as we continue to find it convenient to export raw materials and to import expensive finished goods. That is the plain truth.
Instead we seem to be happy to tie our nations to onerous international trade treaties and obligations which serve only to entrench our own dependency and subordination to the interests of developed economies.
We are complicity, accomplices and accessories to the continued economic enslavement of Africa, a situation which only makes political independence meaningless without control of the economic foundation.
Statutory Instrument 64
In the seminal speech quoted above, President Mugabe alluded to too much focus on a Sadc Free Trade Area, which is not bad in itself, noted, “We, however, remain concerned about the persistently skewed trade imbalance among member-states, which further justifies the pursuance of robust industrialisation policies across the region, if we are to create jobs and curb labour migration.”
Let’s say in passing that we have witnessed the effects of labour migration in search of economic opportunities.
The tragedies we witness daily in dead bodies recovered in the Mediterranean Sea speak to this quest.
The Brexit tremors speak to the same migration fears. Closer to our own shores, the Afrophobic flare-ups witnessed in recent years in the land of the rainbow remind us that even people of colour, themselves historical victims, can turn against each other in times of scarcity.
[That’s why some of us are two-minded at the excitement created in Kigali by the new African passport this week.]
To the substantive matter of SI64. It is a matter which calls for sober heads as it painfully reminds us of the mutual dependencies of nations in the region.
The real risk is someone thinking they can adopt retaliatory measures against Zimbabwe and win. [Obviously the EU and its lopsided EPAs would love to see a fractured Sadc.]
In his inaugural speech, President Mugabe specifically appealed to South African president Jacob Zuma, saying his country was the most developed and should help the rest of the region in catching up.
He said it would be grossly unfair for South Africa to turn the rest of Sadc states into a huge supermarket for its finished products.
The import was that such a skewed trade architecture would destroy the other economies, destroy employment opportunities and ultimately lead to labour migration with its attendant hazards.
Apparently there hasn’t been a meeting of the minds on this, in part because Africans still don’t own, and therefore can’t control, “their” economies.
Those economies must serve the interests of foreigners while Africans provide cheap labour. As a result, the trade imbalances have continued and still continue.
They are seen in the context of neoliberal competition. If Zimbabwe can’t compete, it must be because of its elephant in the room, not the broader drive to grow an economy in which the previously marginalised have a commanding stake.
But Zimbabwe can’t achieve its broader objective so long as it is acts as a huge supermarket for finished products from South Africa, some of them from as far as China.
The economic crisis experience in Musina since the introduction of SI64 two weeks at once shows the mutual dependency of Zimbabwe and South Africa as it illustrates how we have become a huge supermarket for South African manufacturers.
But then when one looks at how short-term inconveniences such as the one caused by SI64 can be turned into political capital by the Mawarires of this continent, the conclusion is far from edifying.
Mental slavery is far worse than physical enslavement, for now the victim is a happy and active endorser of his own condition. Under such conditions no one needs a conscience.