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Biti 'attacks' west's stance on 'sanctions'
ZIMBABWE’S Finance Minister Tendai Biti has accused western countries of “sulking” for rebuffing Zimbabwe’s overtures to normalise trading relations and lift sanctions. “They (western countries) have adopted a chicken and egg approach … they say give us newspapers then we reintegrate you and so on. It’s not mathematics, you can’t do that,” Biti said during a Brooks World Poverty Institute lecture at Manchester University in England. He said Zimbabwe’s “continued isolation would reproduce the same failed African state”. “Sulking and avoiding this government won’t help,” said Biti, a senior member of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change party which entered a coalition with President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF in February. Biti admitted the unity government had “challenges”, but insisted there was a “fair amount of commitment” to deal with them. He pointed at reforms carried out at the central bank which he said since 2003 had “replaced the state and treasury as the dominant player in government”. “The RBZ [Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe] can’t buy dresses and firewood like it did in the past,” Biti said of the bank’s quasi-fiscal activities as Zimbabwe battled record inflation which the IMF estimated at 500 billion in March, before the dollarisation of the economy. Political violence, often cited by western countries as a hurdle to be overcome by the unity government before sanctions are lifted, “is nothing compared to 2008”, Biti said. He said like most of Zimbabwe’s critics, he was strongly opposed to the MDC’s decision to join the unity government. “I cried and said we were selling out,” Biti said. “But I would be the first one to say this experiment should be given a chance. “I have gone around the country asking ordinary Zimbabweans what they think of this government. I met people who had gone for two years without a piece of protein entering their bodies. “Their response was unanimous, they told us ‘stick it inside there’, they said they were tired of being vandalised and abused, they said we need to catch up with other countries and catch up we will!” Biti hailed the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange as the “pest performing in the world”, saying Zimbabwe now had “the architecture of a normal, decent economy”.
Zimbabwe’s recent problems, he said, were spawned by “the limitations of nationalism” which turned the country into a “vampire state, a hooligan state”.
While remaining optimistic, he warned the country could slide back if it failed to negotiate the “conflict trap”.
“Zimbabwe must avoid the conflict trap – the continuous reproduction of conflict,” he said, pointing to the 1980s military operation in Matabeleland “which killed 30,000 of our citizens” as the genesis of the conflicts.
He added: “After Gukurahundi ended in 1987, then came ESAP [Economic Structural Adjustment Programme]. It wasn’t a physical war, but it was a social war which caused social dislocation and you had a flurry of NGOs being formed.
“Between 2000 and 2008, we had a generational war between tired nationalism and a new generation with a different viewpoint and a value system not based on whether one had gone to war. In the process, the country devalued by 40 percent.”
Biti says if the country continues on the path to reform, with a new constitution the key flag point, Zimbabwe has a chance at establishing itself as a regional economic powerhouse.
“Zimbabwe is a sleeping giant which just happens to be in a ditch,” said Biti, speaking on Friday last week. “Never measure a giant in a ditch because you will never get its correct height."
Despite the optimism of Zimbabwean politicians and their African neighbours, western countries have chosen to maintain sanctions on the country until certain "benchmarks" are met. Britain and the United States in particular, have said they will not offer direct bedgetary support to Zimbabwe until "political reforms" are carried out which observers have read as a signal that the West is not keen to deal with a government led by President Mugabe.
