Economic Resurrection

Christ Jesus told his followers the only miracle they were going to see was the 'sign of Jonah'. Rising from the point of death is desperately needed by Zimbabwe's economy which last saw real success, over 500 years ago, as Great Zimbabwe.
Realizing its potential will not be easy. Firstly, the country needs to resurrect its industrial sector. This is the key to any real progress. Just like other successful industrial nations Zimbabwe will need to produce, produce, produce. Currently the country imports and consumes in a cyclical pattern This consume-consume culture is not sustainable. Zimbabwe has become a major international force as it exports labour directly through emigrations, on top of this, jobs are exported abroad by importing goods from abroad.
To resurrect sustainable productivity, Zimbabwe needs to process its minerals and agricultural produce. Taking this further, more value has to be added in all productive activity. Only when Zimbabwe cuts imports, and starts producing mechanical goods locally, can it say it has taken the first step to resurrecting Great Zimbabwe productivity levels.

Reviving the Economy

Practical economics is not taught in class. Those few nuggets of wisdom picked up in standard textbooks are useful less than 1% of the time. Zimbabwe has a desperate financing need. It is no surprise standard economic theory, which fits into elegant looking models, has been of no value. Economics 101 teaches for a state to finance public expenditure it can either tax, print more money or increase real economic growth.
In Zimbabwe's case, printing money is out of the question. Hyperinflation just a few years ago was a nightmare. As the US Dollar is now legal tender, the Reserve Bank can no longer print bucket loads of green to feed an inefficient consumption economy. Tax collection remains shambolic, as the the ruling elite evades taxes with impunity. Zimbabwe's only way out of the quagmire is through generating long-term real economic growth. So far, Economics 101 has given less than its 1% in helping with Zimbabwe's practical problem.
Mainstream economics text books are worse than useless when it comes to prescribing practical economic guidelines. As Zimbabwe learnt in the 90s, with the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, following the advice of international aid agencies, and their elaborate economic theory models to the letter; pure economics can be poisonous.
Werner Sombart(1947) clarified growth can be realized through entrepreneurship, modernizing the state and improving technology -The ideas of Sombart are excluded in mainstream economics. Investing in innovation, technology and invention is a long-term process.China started emulating and copying technologies in the 1940s, it only started realizing rapid growth in the 1980s. State development occurs in a cultural context, as such it is another long-term process. This leaves the entrepreneur as the source of immediate long-term growth potential. Conventional economics texts fail to clarify how entrepreneurial potential can be encouraged, given their mathematical foundations. As such, practical economic growth advice for Zimbabwe cannot be found in 101 Economics class and Zimbabwe needs many more productive entrepreneurs.

Cattle as Capital

Cattle represented humane capital in pre-colonial Zimbabwe. Cattle  were used in agriculture and they represented a store of wealth. The use of cattle in traditional marriage meant cattle helped families come together, as families which recieved cattle from marrying off their daughters could use these cattle to get wives for male members of the family. Families, in commune, would hold a stock of inherited lineage cattle. Furthermore, the fact cattle raising skills were passed from one generation to the next meant; if drought or pestilence decimated stocks they could be easilly rebuilt. Cattle, as a means of facillitating family union, represented a form of social capital which was non-expolitative in nature.

Marx studied the exploitative role of capital using neo-liberal analytic approaches. Capitalist and neo-liberal economists look at capital as a means of production which facillitates self-interest and profit. Given the biased nature of both capitalistic and socialist analyses of capital, the true nature of capital as the power in extractive exploitative interaction was not emphasised. Capital is power, regardless of whether it is productive or financial in origin.

The power of capital has been clarified in neo-colonial financial arrangements and the role of multi-lateral aid agencies. In Zimbabwe, this has meant during years of aid reciept, more aid repayment goes out compared to resources coming. Zimbabwe should learn from the past, anti-social or exploitative capital is not self replecating. The country needs technological training to rebuild all the capital lost since 1975, for just as cattle raising you cannot rebuild without skills. The cattle owners of old knew it was taboo to use any form of wealth, or capital, to entice and seduce the underprivileged. Today, the wealthy in society are not using their wealth to build and support communal capital. Worse they are not building the capital that was lost.

Indigenisation Trap

Whichever way events pan out in the next few years, the idea of indigenisation in Zimbabwe is not going away. Like a genie out of a bottle, a national lottery has been promised by wizened political manipulators. Zimbabwe has forgotten how hundreds of years ago it achieved prosperity by hard work;  and hard work alone. To build Great Zimbabwe, the nation pulled together and people broke their backs to build national wealth.

Building takes hard work and ingenuity, they are no short cuts to success. If the lottery mentality persists, millions will play and only one will win. People are seduced by easy riches- but jackpots don't last.

Indigenising the mines has turned into a nightmare. They will be no capital investment, given indigenisation fears. Furthermore, mine profitability will not deliver dividends-owning majority equity is no guarantee of a return. Then good old fashion corruption has already reared its Gorgon head.

Manufacturing is a trickier beast to muster. Zimbabwe's manufacturing base has been in accelerated decline, since 1975. This decline reached cataclysmic levels with the Land Resettlement campaigns. Manufacture needs productive capital. Productive capital has been the country's Achilless' heel since the end of World War 2. Indigenisation will reduce nonexistent capital stock, maybe labour intensive production methods will replace nonexistent capital. The country cannot do without technology, productive capital  and credit, even if labour is in infinite supply. Indigenisation will rid off future inflows of productive capital, technology and credit. Incoming Eastern capital will remain exploitative and extractive.

If the goal is economic development, the majority needs work-employment and industrial production. As Western economies have learnt, service industry driven growth is a Ponzi myth; it is unsustainable and hence Global Recession. Wanting access to your own national mineral resources is a sovereign right. They are smart methods of gaining direct control. Tragically, a round about complicated  indigenisation offers too many opportunities for grand theft and corruption.

Goodbye Chavez

Economics has no power without political clout and visa-versa. Hugo Chavez used the country's vast oil resources to support the housing, education and living standards of the poor. Chavez was inspired by Castro and Che.

Washington Consensus sponsored dictatorships had for years caused immense suffering in South America. Chavez created a new welfarist platform that has transformed the continent. Even Hugo's enemies admit he had a genuine desire to uplift the poor who are the vast majority in Venezuela. Mainstream economists admit poverty was halved, for the poor, in Chavez's 14 years in power. Detested by the United States- which tried to assassinate him but failed, due to the support Chavez has from the army and the people- Chavez brought about a new South American economic vision. His legacy is economics that practically uplifts the suffering majority.
Goodbye Chavez. Viva Chavez!