Biti: Zimbabwe is on the edge

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Former Finance minister Tendai Biti says Zimbabwe is on the edge because of political and economic crisis.

Biti (TB), who was also once the opposition MDC vice president, spoke about the economic and political developments in the country on the platform In Conversation with Trevor hosted by Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube (TN).

Below are excerpts from the interview.

TN: Greetings, welcome to In Conversation with Trevor, brought to you by Heart and Soul Broadcasting Services.

Today I’m in conversation with Tendai Biti, a lawyer and a former minister of Finance. Tendai Biti, welcome to In Conversation with Trevor.

TB: Thank you.

TN: I’m excited, Tendai, that we finally found the time. Thank you.

And we find the time, Tendai, when the headlines are pretty frightening. Over 60% of retailers have no stock, and I want to start with some heavy lifting stuff here.

There’s a mess out there. It’s a political mess. It’s an economic mess. What do you make of this?

TB: Look, roughly every 10 years, there’s an inflection of multiple crises that converge at one point.

And the history of our country from 1888, when the white men met King Lobengula, signed the Rudd Concession, has been that of cyclical ups and downs, booms, and bursts.

So we can go through a lull of five years, 10 years, sometimes even 15 years, but the inevitable always comes.

That inflection point always comes. And I can argue that we are a state in permanent crisis.

That permanent crisis is, however, interrupted by bouts of peace, or a premature peace and stability. For instance, during the GNU, for instance.

For instance, after the unity accord of December 22 1987, there was some kind of lull. So it’s very cyclical. Part of the problem is that there’s no culture of dialogue.

There’s no culture of listening to each other. There’s no culture of excavating threads of unity amongst the rubble and hubris of difference.

So that culture of not resolving our differences amicably has continued to this very day.

TN: You’re telling a story of our reality, Tendai, we’re right now, I don’t know if we’ve seen things this bad.

What’s the solution here? From what you’re saying, what has happened in the past is not going to fix this. Am I right that the elections have not been able to cure our political problems?

TB: You’re very right. You’re very right. But before I speak about the hard stuff, I want to talk about the citizens. The citizen is abandoned.

The citizen is orphaned. And daily, you and I are seeking to negotiate ourselves out of the reach and influence of the state.

So the citizens essentially negotiated themselves out of the state. So whatever they do is no longer touching us. The influence of the state is very minimal.

TN: What does that mean?

TB: We have lost trust in the state. The state has failed to carry out and implement the ordinary rudimentary role of the state.

We only know the state in its armed expression when it’s beating us up, when it’s shouting at other people, or when motorcades are moving and forcing us out of the way.

That’s our only interaction, or when they want taxes and they are overtaxing us.

So our view of the state is of this predatory institution. That doesn’t make a difference to our lives And daily we are busy trying to negotiate a way further out of the state.

TN: I say though, Tendai, that with all that effort, I really get a sense that Zanu PF people go to bed saying, how do we fix them tomorrow?

TB: It’s almost like they have a department at their head office whose job is just to say, how do we make them suffer?

How do we make them suffer? I mean, I look at the panoply of taxes that we see literally on a day-to-day basis. Who taxes a chicken burger at the chicken inn?

Who taxes a pizza at the pizza hut? I mean, you have to be crazy. Is that desperation? I think it’s a lack of empathy.

It’s also an ideological vacuousness because economics is very ideological.

So if you are on the left you are very empathetic to the ordinary working class.

So anyone will know that you are going to impose harsh corporate taxes of 40%, 45%, but you are kind to the worker, and you don’t like indirect taxes.

So that’s your ideological position. If you are to the right, you don’t like big taxes. You don’t like high taxes.

So you try to cut taxes. You try to limit the involvement and presence of the state in your system. This government now has no ideology. It will tax everything.

TN: What options do the citizens have? Is this a collision between the state and the citizen? What’s going to happen? What will give?

TB: Regrettably now, the regime that has been running us or mis-running us for the past 45 years thrives from the lack of agency, the inability of that ordinary citizen of reacting, of responding, and of fighting back.

The ordinary average citizen sinks into fatalism.

The reason why the Pentecostal prosperity change is much roomy is because it’s harvesting that fatalism. So our people are disadvantaged, and the state now harvests that fatalism.

TN: But where is this leading us? I get the sense we are on the edge. How long is this going to go?

TB: We are on a precipice. We are on a knife edge and when that happens, the absence of a self-correcting polity in our discourse becomes so sharp.

And regrettably, because it’s not there, we resort to what is our natural DNA, which is resolving a crisis by fighting, by implosion, by coups, by factionalism.

And so I will submit that at the present moment we need to create a soft landing for Zimbabwe to reverse the trends of an implosion, as we saw in 2017.

TN There is an implosion that you’re talking about that looks possible. I want us to go to the opposition political parties.

What’s happening? What ails the opposition? And how can it be fixed so that it participates in a dialogue that provides a solution to our political and economic problems?

TB: There’s a massive social dislocation, which those that are misguiding us are totally oblivious to.

They are totally immune to. There’s a massive breakdown of the family as a social unit.

There’s an unprecedented level of divorce in the country. So I would reckon that one in three marriages are ending up in a court of law.

When I started practicing law, divorces by consent were part of the motion called the Wednesday.

Nowadays, there is now a separate court that sits on Thursday, whose court row is about 40 cases. These are by consent.

Then there’s a building in Harare on 4th Street, where there are multiple courtrooms that are hearing family disputes.

So there’s massive social dislocation. And when you assault and mal-seat the family as a social unit, you’ve killed that society, because that is the starting point of social organisation, the family unit, it’s mal-seated.

And we see the consequences in teenage pregnancies, in child marriages.

I’ve spent the last 10 years as a lawyer trying to outlaw child marriages, trying to outlaw teenage pregnancies, trying to raise the age of sex consent to 18. But it’s a little impact of no consequences at all.

In every hour in Zimbabwe, six illegal abortions are taking place, as we are talking. And these are official statistics.

There’s massive drug abuse. Mutoriro, guka, crystal meth. There’s a little bottle of alcohol called kambwa, which costs $1 for 2, and so forth. Any serious government would be banning that.

But this government benefits from that.

So when you look at the maternal mortality rates, when you look at infant mortality rates, the slow genocide that is taking place in our country is the result of an irresponsible government that has abandoned its obligations towards its citizens. And the statistics speak for themselves. And people are leaving the country.

The millions of people that are leaving the country, over 4 million people that have left the country, 73% of our top, top professionals, top surgeons, top engineers, top scientists, they’ve left the country.

Some of them are in a very unkind, unwelcoming diaspora, where they are forced to do many jobs that they never imagined that after spending 24 years at a university, you will find yourself cleaning an old person in Lancaster.

So it’s demeaning, but that’s the status quo. But it’s benefiting the ruling party