The curse of Africa’s resources has become the blessing of the liberation struggle predatory class in partnership with the military and foreign predators.
Opinion: Vince Musewe
The investigations correspondent at the Financial Times, Tim Burgis, has published a book titled The Looting Machine.
It is kaleidoscope of the penury of Africa caused by a coalition between an international predatory mafia and African Presidents and their predatory coalitions made up of the army, intelligence services and State institutions that are raping Africa’s resources at the expense of citizens and economic development.
It is a shocking saga of the deliberate underdevelopment and theft of Africa’s resources by the very individuals, who claim to have liberated Africa from colonialism.
In fact, in Zimbabwe, we are slightly better off than most other African States because the English colonialists left a functioning infrastructure behind, which we have done our best to destroy.
In other countries, such as the former Portuguese colonies, I hear they even took light bulbs with them as they left.
The looting machine is a well-organised and orchestrated partnership between China and African liberation struggle elites ,who initiate resource-based exploitation projects in Africa fronted by Western consultants and middlemen with contacts in Africa’s highest offices and families of the elite robbers.
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From the Democratic Republic of Congo, to Angola, to the Niger, to Zimbabwe, nearly every African country has been duped by smooth-talking politically-connected corporate criminals, who peddle resource deals, which significantly undervalue Africa’s resource endowments; and pay huge sums of “facilitation fees” through a network of fronting companies with dubious credentials and opaque shareholding structures.
Billions are subsequently transferred to Asia and other secret tax havens at the expense of Africa’s development.
This same template was used in the case of the Marange diamond find, where the World Bank estimated that Zimbabwe lost close to $15 billion through illicit financial flows and murky deals that benefited the Zanu PF predatory cabal.
China is the main culprit, where African resources are being exchanged for infrastructural project development.
We now even have a case where China, through its vast reserves and investment banks, is buying out former colonial resource companies all over Africa and transferring vast amounts of resources to China cheaply.
In return, they will build roads, railways and military schools and even provide food aid, as if theirs is the concern for Africa’s development and poverty, yet it’s really all about them.
It fact, that China has a plan for Africa’s resources, while Africa, like a dumb prostitute, has no plan for China except to fill the coffers of a predatory elite.
No surprise, therefore, that whenever there is a huge find of new resources in Africa, China is somehow involved and there is a scramble by politicians to feed off the trough through facilitation fees that never reach Treasury.
The resource curse, as we know it, is being fed through theft by a partnership between an international predatory cabal and Africa’s leaders.
In Zimbabwe, the looting machine is alive and well. This, of course, does not only apply to resources, but to development projects, which are deliberately overpriced to feed the looting machine.
In addition, there is rampant abuse of public funds through State enterprise contracts, as has recently been reported. Our ministers are the cogs that oil this looting machine.
The private sector is also a culprit and complicit in fuelling the looting machine. In Zimbabwe, we have several allegedly successful private companies, whose success is only because of political connections. That is the nature of post-colonial Africa and no country is immune.
Unfortunately, in such cases, where governments are able to plunder illicit funds from resources, dictatorships are strengthened and entrenched because they need no longer be accountable to the people.
They become the gatekeepers to the feeding trough and the more chaos there is, the more power they exercise over, who gets to “eat”.
In fact, secret resource-based revenues prop up dictators and their cronies and they, therefore, are not accountable to the electorate nor do they need it.
As a result, elections become a farce to create a fallacy of democracy. The looting machine cannot afford to lose any elections and be replaced by a democratic government.
That is our problem in Zimbabwe. The curse of resources is a blessing to the dictator and his cabal and a curse to the masses.
An interesting point raised by Burgis in his book is that the liberation struggle elite are using exactly the same methods used by Zimbabwe coloniser, Cecil John Rhodes to subjugate Africa and its resources.
They claim to be our liberators and yet by their very nature they are greedy, uncaring and defiled. Their cries against colonialists are, therefore, devoid of any morals whatsoever.
Clearly, in Zimbabwe, we have much work to do to dismantle the looting machine and deliver development to the masses.
The reason why Zimbabwe is failing to unlock its vast mineral resource potential and utilise its land assets to produce enough food is not because of ignorance or failed economics, but, rather, because of the looting machine that thrives on chaos and patronage.
The insatiable hunger for power and money by the Zanu PF predatory cabal and its cronies is our curse. They have even admitted that they are entitled to utilise public funds as they wish.
In other words, they are using our taxes to further oppress us and postpone economic development.
The recent rant by the army on corruption is ironic because it is the army that has been at the centre of resource looting.
In my opinion, Zimbabwe will never live up to its full potential until we get rid of the Zanu PF predatory cabal, which includes the very military that is pretending to have seen the light.
Vince Musewe is an economist and author. He is also secretary for finance and economic affairs of the People’s Democratic Party. You may contact him on [email protected]
