Thinking outside the Zanu-PF paradigm

We are caught in a spider's web of lies about our history, our potential and our future as a country.

"The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside".

Allan David Bloom the American economist said this and it is true indeed. We are caught in a spider's web of lies about our history, our potential and our future as a country. The only way we can extricate ourselves from that is to first change our belief system as a society and create a new perspicacity of who we can be and the possibilities which are staring at us.

I have participated in many debates with fake analysts and some ministers and what strikes me is how these individuals have actually been blinded by the unceasing rhetoric and propaganda of the Zanu-PF machinery. They truly believe that there is no outside to our current paradigm and that this is all we can be.

They truly believe that we have many enemies out there who are working continuously to thwart our aspirations as a people and that it is those others in the West who have caused the problems that we face today. According to this belief system, they themselves have played absolutely no part at all in creating the problems we face today. Nothing can be further from the truth as we all know that it is the choices of the last 35 years which have created today's problems.

I truly believe that Zimbabwe can be a great nation indeed once it unleashes itself onto a different trajectory unhindered by the clutches of a history of oppression and fear. The archaic paradigm of victimhood which accepts that we as Zimbabweans are incapable of creating our own prosperity and cannot create self-sustaining economy despite the fact that we have all the necessary knowledge base spread all over the world and the necessary resources to do so must be rejected and expunged from our minds.

We must vociferously reject this limiting mental model that there is no outside. We the younger generation have the responsibility of doing that. We must now create a paradigm that says that our country Zimbabwe has all it requires to create trillion dollar economy within 30 years at the most. We must also believe that we can shape a self-sustaining inclusive economy with full employment without relying aid on the West, or the East for that matter, to determine what we can become. We must stop being slaves to the self-serving political rhetoric or to international capital. We can control our destiny as a country if only we believe.

In order to do that, we must look at other nations that have come out of worse conditions than our country is in. We can build a formidable economy if we choose to learn from countries such as Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany and others and acknowledge what they did right.

Political leadership is crucial yes, but what do we do when our politicians are unable to imagine what we want? What do we do when they are limited in their thinking on how far we can go? When they have no vision beyond their lifetime and are only interested in power and what they can get now from it?

We have no choice but to create our own new paradigm as free citizens of Zimbabwe. This responsibility applies to especially those in the diaspora who have had experience in how successful economies work.

In my opinion Zimbabweans in the diaspora must take the lead in creating a new narrative of the future that is bolder and significantly different from the past, they have the knowledge. We must turn the brain drain of yesterday in to today's brain gain and it's not impossible.

The first step we must take is to build a compelling and inclusive vision of a better future. This must be a collaborative effort. Then we must leave it to our technocrats and professionals all over the world to tell us how. I would rather we spend time doing that now that waste our energy in useless politicking which does not deliver  a single iota of value.

Our new vision for a trillion dollar economy by 2045 must be led by rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. We must no longer think primary product but must think of manufacturing things and value adding in both agriculture and mining as the core drivers of economic reinvention. We must think of industrial hubs underpinned by free enterprise and economic freedom. We must think of servicing Africa as our primary market and forget this idea that Africa can rise only to the benefit of countries such as China. We must think of regional integration in our infrastructure, ict and energy sectors. These are the conversations that are now necessary.

We have to target the growing African middle class with high end products and not only expect these to be imports from Asia.

This requires that our investment policies must be inward looking and we must rely less on FDI and the IMF as drivers of our economic growth. We also need to grow a local vibrant business sector fuelled by our own savings. Entrepreneurship, innovation and risk taking with new ways of creating access to capital are therefore key.

In my opinion for Zimbabwe to truly grow to its full potential it only takes us change our attitude that government is not the driver of growth. Government is a  net cost to society and the rapid growth that we need cannot be driven by bearucrats or politicians, but by entrepreneurs, technicians and dreamers.

The Zimbabwe we wish to build is grand and in my opinion, we continue to be limited only by our imagination and belief.  That must change.

Vince Musewe is an economist and author based in Harare. You may contact him on vtmusewe@gmail