It’s the ideas, stupid!

New Zimbabwe

By Prof Jonathan Moyo

21 November 2012

IF THERE is one thing that Zimbabweans can reiterate and reiterate until the cows come home without twisting their tongues like Elizabeth Macheka over the pronouncement of the word, it would be not only to reiterate that the two MDC formations are ideologically bankrupt and policy-incompetent but also to reiterate that the MDC formations have absolutely nothing to offer to the people of Zimbabwe beyond the self-aggrandisement, self-enrichment and sexual pleasure of the leadership of the two embattled parties.

There are two latest examples of this. One is how Morgan’s Tsvangirai’s MDC has reacted to the theme of Zanu PF’s 2012 people’s conference in Gweru early next month whose banner is “Indigenise, Empower, Develop and Create Employment”.

The other example is the reaction of Welshman Ncube’s MDC to Zanu PF’s 2012 Presidential agricultural input scheme that has earmarked $20 million to support at least 800,000 farming households.

Stung by the self-evident policy significance and positive impact of the Presidential agricultural input scheme which is in fact not new as it has been running for years now, Welshman Ncube’s MDC unleashed David Coltart – a former Rhodesian Selous Scouts who by his own admission in his own website only started having an interest in human rights and good governance after independence in 1983 – to attempt an impossible task of trashing the scheme.

In typical Rhodie fashion, Coltart did not care about the beneficiaries of the agricultural input scheme, instead he was manifestly dismayed and apparently scared to his political death that a staggering 800,000 farming households whose livelihood depends on the soil were set to benefit from concrete support given to them by Zanu PF.

And as if to take Zimbabweans for fools, Coltart not only demanded to know the identity of the donors to the $20 million agricultural input scheme but also wondered why the well-wishers could donate such an amount to the agricultural scheme while Tendai Biti had allocated only $8 million for education this year.

Notably and understandably given his anti-people Rhodie roots, Coltart could not bring himself into thinking about Biti’s paltry allocation to agriculture because just like Biti and indeed just like the two MDC formations, Coltart does not understand the strategic importance of agriculture to the Zimbabwean economy including to the sustenance of critical social sectors of that economy such as education and health.

Where money is involved, the accountability rule is that you do not ask stupid questions about where it is coming from but you simply follow it. In other words, you follow the money if you want to know the use to which it is put. But Coltart and those who think like him have not been interested in following the $20 million Presidential agricultural input scheme because even fools can see where it is going: to 800,000 farming households across the county and this means the money is going to the masses.

But why, as would be normal in such situations, has Coltart not shown any interest in following the $20 million Presidential agricultural input scheme to its destination? It has since emerged that because of his now widely-known sympathies for Tsvangirai’s MDC, driven by his growing fear that he will almost certainly lose his Senate seat in Bulawayo if he seeks re-election on the ticket of Welshman Ncube’s beleaguered MDC which has defined its political fate in narrow geographic terms with no political content, Coltart weighed into the misplaced attack of the $20 million Presidential agricultural input scheme to contain the damaging consequences of Tsvangirai’s open zip shenanigans.

It was not a coincidence that Coltart’s outburst happened exactly when there were very serious questions about Tsvangirai’s source of money given his Cabinet salary and background after he was reported to have paid some $300,000 cash to settle a maintenance claim from Locardia Karimatsenga and a reported $200,000 in legal costs bringing the figure to at least half a million dollars.

Coltart must not fool himself into believing that his typically Rhodie diversionary and disinformation tactics perfected by Selous Scouts have gone unnoticed. It was a good try, as they say, but nothing else beyond that.

The bottom line is that there is a world of difference between, on the one hand, Morgan Tsvangirai $500,000 from unknown sources dished out to pay for one of Tsvangirai’s concubines in acknowledgment of his sexual gratification and, on the other hand, Zanu PF’s $20 million Presidential agricultural input scheme given to 800,000 farming households across the country.

Does David Coltart or anyone else for that really think that it is better to pay a concubine for sexual services rendered than to support farmers? In the same vein, does David Coltart or anyone else who suffers from similarly warped thinking believe that it is better or is more responsible to demand to know where the money to support farmers is coming from than to demand to know where the money to support Tsvangirai’s sexual interest is coming from? Which of these two raises fundamental moral issues in the public domain?

Is it Coltart’s submission that it is right for some Western donor countries that have refused to support agriculture, and their identities are known, to settle Tsvangirai’s sex bills? It is salutary to know that the story of who gave Tsvangirai $500,000 to settle Locardia Karimatsenga’s claims is yet to be told and like the sun will rise tomorrow that story will be told and maybe by then the 800,000 farming households supported by the $20 million Presidential agricultural input scheme will be harvesting their crop.

Meanwhile, and in a failed attempt to support Coltart’s whistle in the wilderness about the unassailable $20 million Presidential agricultural input scheme for 800,000 farming households, Tsvangirai’s MDC issued an inane statement earlier his week preposterously claiming that Zanu PF had allegedly stolen ideas from the MDC-T’s imported Juice policy. This was ostensibly prompted by the “Indigenise, Empower, Develop and Create Employment” theme of the 2012 Zanu PF’s people’s conference in Gweru next month.

The MDC-T claimed in an official statement, of all things, that “Zanu PF has now finally seen sense in the MDC thrust on job creation and has at the 11th hour slotted ‘Create Employment’ in their conference theme”. Now if this is not madness, nothing is.

Since when do mere words constitute an idea or a policy? Who on earth is the owner of the words “Create Employment”? Is it the MDC-T and how many in the MDC-T leadership can reiterate these words without tripping over the conceptual meaning?

Seriously, it is inherently foolish and the height of intellectual bankruptcy for anyone to think or believe that any person or any organisation owns words or to claim that words are synonymous with ideas or policies.

When it comes to the words in question, even kindergarten kids know that “Employment Creation” has been at the centre of Zanu PF ideology and discourse for decades. In fact, the Zanu PF government has even had a Ministry of Employment Creation! People who do not know this rudimentary fact are desk politicians of the likes of Alex Magaisa who penned the nonsensical MDC-T statement that stupidly claimed that Zanu PF had stolen the words “employment creation” from the MDC-T’s imported Juice so-called policy which is full of Tsvangirai’s juicy stuff that does not go beyond his personal pleasure.

The issue is not about who is using which words but about the policy premise and the policy substance of the words used. According to its imported Juice policy, the MDC-T believes that jobs can be imported and brought to Zimbabwe in briefcases by the same Western countries whose economies are going through a crippling financial crisis and which the MDC-T believes have loved Zimbabweans so much as to slap them with punitive economic sanctions that have ravaged our economy and devastated the livelihoods of ordinary people.

Zanu PF’s employment creation policy is not based on foreign agendas that are beyond the control of Zimbabweans but are squarely based on the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme whose revolutionary thrust is to ensure that the commanding heights of the economy are in the hands of Zimbabweans to unlock real value for development and opportunities for creating real jobs.

Zimbabweans now know and understand that the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme is not imported, is not a slogan and is not wishful thinking but is tangible and unfolding on the ground with visible success. This success is evidenced by the broad-based compliance by economic players among major corporations and the launch of community and employee share ownership schemes that are now found in at least seven provinces with more roll-outs to come before the end of the year.

In fact, the programme has been so successful in terms of laying the foundation for creating real jobs that many other countries are now making inquiries to draw lessons while others such as Kenya and Indonesia have in fact followed suit.

In the circumstances, the issue is not about words but about ideas and policies. Zanu PF is committed to developing Zimbabwe including creating jobs through indigenisation of all of the 14 key sectors of the economy while the MDC-T believes that jobs can be created by the same countries that have imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe and which are failing to create jobs in their own backyards.

Anybody who believes that countries that cannot create jobs for their own citizens can create jobs for Zimbabweans needs to be examined by a competent psychiatrist.