By Takura Zhangazha*
Following the swearing in of members of Zimbabwe’s
Parliament ( House of Assembly and the
Senate)President Emerson Mnangagwa is legally obliged to appoint what is
commonly referred to as a cabinet. This is in terms of Section 104 of the Constitution
of Zimbabwe. This provision also gives
the president as outlined in Section 104 (3) the latitude to appoint ministers or
their deputies from an extra five (5) members of Parliament that he appoints
for their ‘professional skills and competence’.
The debate around who Mnangagwa eventually appoints to
cabinet has been ‘corporatist’ and ‘ageist’.
The former largely because there are assumptions that the size of
cabinet/government really matters. In
the lingo of those that would claim to be more entrepreneurial than others, it
must be a ‘lean’ cabinet poised to replicate the power structures of multi-national
corporations.
That is to say there is a deserving executive (president) head
honcho who appoints a team of special experts to push the profits of his entity
up and above the rest of the crowd. A crowd
which to his eventual regret will be competing with that of a majority of
Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC) countries and beyond. This argumentation
assumes that for an African country to be successful, it must follow the
neo-liberal (economic) free market trajectory of the west and the East. Or to put it a little more simply, it must be
run like a private corporation and for the maximum possible (private)
profit.
A decent number of middle and upper class Zimbabweans
appreciate this ‘business like’ approach.
Except that it is not as political let alone as people centered as
assumed. For example Mnangagwa
told delegates at a launch of a Chinese security company's products that he would like to ‘create billionaires’ in
Zimbabwe. At least by the year
2030. And that in itself is improbable if
taken literally. Its all about business
and capital with a somewhat hare-brained assumption that private capital will
indeed create enough ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’
despite its intention at maximum profit
at minimum cost.
For the opposition MDC Alliance, being a minority in
Parliament and least likely to be included in cabinet, this is an issue of the proverbial ‘grapes
are sour’. Had it been them in ‘corporate
cabinet power’ their strategies would have been the same. With a bit more of hindsight political blame games
about how the country and the economy got to where it is.
But a few pointers to the ruling establishment as well as
the Zimbabwean public. The first being
that government cabinets are not mandated to function like boards of private
corporations. They are essentially
executive political arms of the state.
And their primary mandate is to serve the people politically before they
experiment with corporatist approaches to administration. So even if we call for the cabinet to be ‘lean’
or full of ‘technocrats’ that does not change their political mandate. What is more important, politically, is their
programme of action at improving the livelihoods of the people they
govern. Not their ‘palatable’
appearance. Questions that must be asked
of them is what do they intend to do, not who is doing it. The
latter question was answered by the election.
Secondly, a structured understanding of the ideological motivations
of government/ cabinet really matter. In
the case of Mnangagwa’s government it is crystal clear that they have a
neo-liberal, free market approach to how they intend to govern. Their mantra of Zimbabwe being ‘open for
business’ betrays their elitist/corporatist persuasions. It is a huge gamble on their part as they
have decided to embark on Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP)
2.0. An experiment that backfired spectacularly in
the late 1990's.
Thirdly and finally, we must always ask ourselves how we got
here. That is to say, how we came to be
at a point where assumptions of ‘entrepreneurship’ and mimicry of
capitalist/neo-liberal economic models are the panacea to our contextual
economic challenges. It would appear
that the primary cause of our arrival here is a ruling establishment as led by
Robert Mugabe (now succeeded by Mnangagwa) that worked ominously to dissipate a
critical national consciousness. First of
all by acting to repress not only alternative political leaders but more
importantly alternative critical ideas and perspectives as to how the country should be run. Add to
this an opposition that initially began as one of left leaning idological persuasion and allowed itself to be hijacked by the right (local and global)
and you have a disastrous recipe for politics as entertainment or borderline cultist
movements/organisations.
The remedy would be to seek to return to critical contextual
ideas and actions. Even at a time when
it appears to be futile.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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