Shady economic body adds to fears in Zimbabwe

Posted to the web on: 19 April 2006
Shady economic body adds to fears in Zimbabwe
Dumisani Muleya

THE shadowy Cuban-style Zimbabwe National Security Council (ZNSC) was
recently set up to run the country’s economy on a crisis-management
basis — 26 years after the start of self-rule.

The move indicates a virtual state of emergency in Zimbabwe’s economy,
confirms the government’s policy paralysis and reflects panic in the
corridors of power.

But it also shows government’s implicit awareness of the potentially
devastating political consequences of the current economic meltdown. The
ZNSC, chaired by President Robert Mugabe, runs the economy on an
emergency basis — as in Cuba, where “anguish committees” manage the
economy. Mugabe referred to the initiative yesterday during his keynote
address at the country’s 26th anniversary of independence from Britain.
At the same event, he made a stunning claim that the economy, which has
shrunk by a cumulative 35% in the past six years, will grow between 1%
and 2% this year. No one believes this, and it would be shocking if
Mugabe does.

The Cuban economy is run by a Council of State, backed by committees,
although the government has devolved some authority to ministries and
enterprises in recent years. Under the slogan “Socialism or Death”, the
Cuban regime continues to proclaim Cuba a socialist state with an
economy organised under Marxist-Leninist principles. Most means of
production are owned and run by the government. About 75% of the labour
force is employed directly by the state.

Mugabe tried to do this and failed and now wants to try it again,
although this time it is crisis management rather than socialist
principles that are driving the process. In October 1990, Cuban leader
Fidel Castro said his country had entered a “special period in time of
peace” and that the economy would function as if in a time of war until
the crisis had been resolved.

This appears to be the mentality within the Zimbabwean government. The
ZNSC will run the economy like Cuba’s Council of State until the current
crisis disappears, something unlikely if no fundamental political and
economic reforms are undertaken. Cuba learnt this the hard way.

In Zimbabwe, the state security establishment now effectively runs the
economy as it cross-cuts the emergency subcommittees which have been set
up to perform a rescue operation. This confirms the view that the
Central Intelligence Organisation and the Joint Operations Command —
comprising the intelligence service, army, police and prisons — now
virtually run the country and are involved in a whole gamut of
nonsecurity issues.

The state security establishment has no credible economic knowledge,
capacity or the means to pull Zimbabwe out of the morass. The situation
requires a political solution and economic measures supported by the
international community. The ZNSC initiative only validates the view of
a police state in Zimbabwe run by the state security apparatus.
Government bureaucracy is already heavily militarised. Serving or
retired army officers can be found in government departments,
parastatals, electoral institutions and quasigovernment organisations
performing the roles of civilians.

Military rule takes various forms, which include army control where the
generals direct events from barracks, arbitration in which the army
comes in as conflict manager between political parties or the government
and opposition parties, and army veto where the military vetoes some
civilian decisions. There are also crypto-military democracies in which
it is difficult to tell where army interventions end and civilian rule
begins.

Anecdotal evidence shows the military might be pulling the strings in
civilian government issues, but there is still no decisive proof that
army authority has taken root and is now the basis of governance in
Zimbabwe.

There are clear signs of the executive’s erosion of confidence in public
officials, and the encroachment of armed forces — apparently by
invitation — in civilian matters. While this might serve Mugabe’s
self-preservation needs at the moment, it creates problems for future
governments which may have to struggle to uproot an entrenched military
culture in civilian government.

The ZNSC will not be able to reverse the economic decline in the present
circumstances — not in a “thousand years” as central bank governor
Gideon Gono recently observed, in an eerie echo of former Rhodesian
leader Ian Smith’s comment on the prospects of majority rule in Zimbabwe
in 1965.

Muleya is Harare correspondent and Zimbabwe Independent news editor.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A187167