What’s this creature called ‘climb-up’?

By The NewsDay | May. 30, 2014 | 4 Min read

The headline in this week’s Sunday Mail was unprecedented for that pro-establishment newspaper.

Echoes with Conway Tutani

It stated boldly: Govt in major climbdown.

The audacious headline has triggered strong reaction from official sources. How could the paper have such a politically incorrect headline about the “never-erring, all-knowing revolutionary” government? The denials were too strong — and this only served to confirm that the paper had fundamentally got it right. They would rather deny a hard fact than face it.

They redefined “climbdown” to “climb-up”. People can be inventive where it involves serving their purposes.

These “experts” always wear their hearts on their sleeves, so there is no doubt about who they support, whether wrong or right.

This also amounts to political correctness: that is, telling the powers-that-be what they want to hear or what you think they want to hear; propounding ideas that do not offend your boss, but that are not helpful to the nation.

If the boss makes a stance, they hail him and put a political gloss on it. When he makes a complete U-turn on that stance, they still hail him and put another different political gloss.

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This results in enforced language, ideas and policies that can be at cross purposes with the national interest. The worst example of political correctness was in Germany in the 1930s when intellectuals went along with Adolf Hitler’s fascist policies which made him a dictator and led to the Second World War.

But there was a shot of truth in that cocktail of denials — Information minister Jonathan Moyo said indigenisation was not going to be implemented dogmatically — as has been the case up to now — but pragmatically.

Now, if someone denies that nothing fundamental has changed, what are they talking about? There has been a major shift in substance and tone regarding indigenisation. It’s now going to be done more systematically, if not more gingerly. The apologetic and defensive talk of a “climb-up” becomes nothing more than semantic.

Change has come and this has been forced upon the government. President Robert Mugabe sent the right signals in his Independence Day address last month and things have been moving fast since then.

Sense has finally prevailed after a damaging ultra-nationalistic approach to indigenisation had opened doors for all sorts of fraudsters to grab companies from their rightful owners and scared away foreigner investors of substance — not some Chinese who have come to Zimbabwe to sell sadza and matumbu (casings).

This is not to xenophobically tar all the Chinese, but only for the purpose of giving specific examples. It would be unfair and wrong to stereotype the Chinese as crooked and exploitative like it would be equally wrong to label all Westerners as complete bloodsuckers, especially in view of the fact that we have more than our fair share of black parasites who have looted and pillaged under the guise of indigenisation.

What could go wrong with indigenisation has indeed been going wrong. Indigenisation minister Francis Nhema, Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa, Tourism minister Walter Mzembi and Foreign Affairs deputy minister Chris Mutsvangwa have said as much without being melodramatic, but sensible.

These have been “amadoda sibili”(men with resolve), as opposed to flatterers who are not brave and principled enough to speak truth to power, but would rather go along to get along while the country plunges headlong into an economic abyss.

The tone itself has vastly changed unless one is tone-deaf. It now seems restraint and sanity will carry the day, providing the setting for true indigenisation, not daylight robbery of investors — both local and foreign — after pouring in their money to establish, maintain and grow their businesses; and ordinary Zimbabweans who have been excluded from benefiting from national assets which rightly belong to the nation as a whole, not a few well-connected individuals who have formed oligarchies to milk the country dry.

To his immense credit, then Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono had long ago pointed out that a one-size-fits-all approach would severely damage the economy, but he was excoriated by Kasukuwere, the previous unnecessarily combative Indigenisation minister.

Now the regulations have been clarified and moderated, haven’t they? It’s a climbdown in the national interest, so there is no need to call this a “climb-up” to merely massage some egos or to turn the tables on those people who have been right all along. These apologists are the same “experts” who cheered along in 2000 as the so-called fast-track land reform descended into a maze of chaos and violence, detracting from its whole purpose.

Be that as it may, you don’t have to press your point — or the truth — too far, as one newspaper did this week in claiming most of the credit for the climbdown under the headline: Mr President, thank you for listening.

There was nothing epiphanic or intuitive about this. This was plain to see. It did not take rocket science.

Objections and pressure came from all directions — including from within Zanu PF itself as the recent clash between Mzembi and Kasukuwere amply demonstrated. Panellists on ZBC-TV’s only watchable current affairs programme Melting Pot have been hitting hard on the disastrousness of many aspects of the indigenisation regulations; and journalists from various — not one — media houses have been arrested, detained and charged. It’s an occupational hazard in Zimbabwe.

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki did not have to read any local paper to fly all the way from South Africa earlier this year to point out to Mugabe the damaging effects of the noisy implementation of indigenisation.

Indeed, tone matters for both politicians and the media. If you pen an ode to yourself, it can rub people — including your admirers — the wrong way.

That said, this reference to “climb-up” is political correctness gone far — or mad. One thing for sure: Political correctness is not the law — you can go against it.