Financial Gazette
By Andrew Kunambura
15 December 2016
LISTENING to both President Robert Mugabe’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) and Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa’s 2017 National Budget presentation last week, many were left wondering what to make of the two.
The SONA, presented two days ahead of the budget, was perhaps meant to inform and set the tone for Chinamasa.
Addressing a joint sitting of Parliament, President Mugabe delivered a speech full of hope and pregnant with optimism, never mind a swarm of critics that dismissed it as a fantasy divorced from reality.
Forty eight hours later, Chinamasa strode into the same august House and, in the presence of his superiors; he presented a gloomy economic outlook full of chilling suggestions such as further taxation on airtime vouchers.
The tax was veiled as a health levy.
Where his superior predicted an economic boom, Chinamasa revised downwards the economic growth for 2017 to a 1,7 percent from the 2016 projection of 2,7 percent.
While SONA did not address the contentious issue of civil servants salaries and bonuses, Chinamasa cleverly put it across by simply stating that government was running on unsustainable expenditure, with the wage bill now rising to 95 percent of revenue.
He left it like that, knowing how President Mugabe has on two occasions overruled his decision to stop bonus payments and slash salaries by a good margin of 20 percent.
Not that Chinamasa had the most brilliant budget; far from it.
It was probably more off-putting than SONA, which was good fodder for government critics following its presentation.
The criticisms that SONA received probably summed up Zimbabweans’ general impression towards their leadership — uninspiring.
And, as expected, the usual suspects coming in the form of disappointed political analysts, political opponents and social commentators, dug into the speech in the same manner that hungry vultures dismantle a large carcass.
Although SONA was not a wholesome disaster because it addressed a number of important issues such as improving the ease of doing business, sourcing and distribution of farming inputs and measures to curb gender based violence, critics still found more than enough reason to trash it.
The reactions were wide and diverse, but all collapsing into one common denominator: That SONA was far removed from the actual state that the nation is currently in.
“In the past (President) Mugabe had the capacity to deceive brilliantly; now he is just an emperor with no clothes and nothing to offer,” wrote former Cabinet minister, David Coltart, now an outspoken government critic on micro blogging site twitter.
Another former minister, Tendai Biti, who served along with Coltart in the inclusive government era, also waded in, posting on twitter: “Tired, exhausted, spineless, 45 minute (it was actually 31 minutes) rumbling that did not inspire nor offer any solution or meaningful insight on the State of the nation.”
Such has been the case of Zimbabwe, where anything the leadership tries to do, even in good faith, is met with serious scepticism and has missiles and salvos fired at it from all directions.
The general consensus was that if it was to be fairly analysed, SONA was a huge let-down, which did not address the real state of this nation.
Many analysts described it as a mere collection of what respective ministries were doing, or not doing.
Even so, the address was more about optimistic economic projections that were utterly not in sync with the reality on the ground.
For example, SONA proclaimed that a boom witnessed in the tourism sector continued to grow, adding that government was now expecting arrivals to hit 2,5 million by year end after 902 435 tourists reportedly came to Zimbabwe during the first half of the year.
How is it possible to lure 1,6 million tourists in the dying weeks of the year, when the country only managed a fraction of that in 11 months, is debate for another day.
“The true state of the nation is that our tourism figures are embarrassing, and that if we had any shame, we would just not bother talking about them,” opined political analyst, Alexander Rusero.
“During the course of the year, we saw hotels closing because there are no visitors booking the rooms. If we are receiving those huge amounts of tourists, then where are they sleeping,” he asked rhetorically.
SONA completely ignored the most talked about issue at the moment: The liquidity crisis which today sees citizens spending long hours in winding bank queues for petite withdrawals that are not worthy the endurance.
Nor was there any mention of the contentious bond notes that were ostensibly introduced as an export incentive, but have crept into account holders who hardly know what the whole export hullabaloo is all about.
People generally expected the president to address this ominous issue, but he didn’t.
Instead, the most pressing national issue at the moment was placed under the blanket of “all manner of economic hardships”, with the travailing populace being saluted for enduring such.
This left many wondering if the government truly has an appreciation of the degree of the suffering that the public is enduring.
SONA, thus, melted down into a squandered chance for the ZANU-PF government to pacify the agitated citizens or inspire younger generations who feel their future is in jeopardy.
How, for example, does a state of the nation fail to address glaring social woes such as crumpling State hospitals that have stopped executing some of their most basic duties like carrying out corrective surgeries for lack of equipment and pain killers?
Only this week, the Zimbabwe National Water Authority released damning statistics showing that major dams on which government is pinning its hopes for the success of the command agriculture programme do not have water.
And, in addition to the usual water challenges being faced in all the country’s urban areas, there is a huge possibility that the programme might fail if the dams that provide the much needed irrigation water do not fill up on time.
The forecasted heavy rains that had prompted government to devise the command agriculture maize production scheme have been slow in coming, and the agriculture season is marching on.
Watchers argued that the optimism that was shown so prevalently in the address is a big yawn from reality.
Said political commentator, Rashweat Mukundu: “No critical national issues were addressed. It was just a repetition of Zim-Asset (Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation) issues, while economic indicators are pointing in a certain directive, they say the opposite. This is downright disingenuous on the part of government. SONA induced neither hope nor confidence in the public.”
Japhet Moyo, secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, was disappointed that the address was mum on runaway unemployment, which is threatening to top 90 percent.
“We are not even sure that jobs will still be there, come 2017. People are being forced to use bond notes and some are going without meals, yet (President) Mugabe says the economy is recovering. His government cannot simply pay workers. What kind of recovery is that,” Moyo asked.
Opposition political parties also grabbed the opportunity to lash out at government.
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) spokesman, Obert Gutu, described SONA as a dump squib.
“Instead of addressing critical issues such as the grinding poverty that is afflicting at least 75 percent of the Zimbabwean population in both rural and urban areas, rampant unemployment particularly amongst the youth and the financial disaster that has been caused by the decision to introduce bond notes into the financial market, SONA was bereft of details on concrete and sustainable measures and policies to resuscitate the comatose economy,” he wrote.
People’s Democratic Party spokesperson, Jacob Mafume, touted: “You can no longer make sense of the policy positions that are announced by the government.”
In real terms, one needs not peruse the SONA speech to get the true state of the nation, which says government imported large quantities of maize to feed people, they need to visit villages where people are starving and little girls are dropping out of school to take up sex work to escape poverty.
The true state of Zimbabwe is realised when one travels to Beitbridge to see hundreds of people risking life and limb crossing the great crocodile-infested Limpopo River to beat the much lauded Statutory Instrument number 64 which banned imports.
To realise the true state of the nation, one may need to move around the filthy slums and crammed streets of any city or town that have been invaded by vendors, some with one-month-old babies strapped on their backs, selling all sorts of things.