Baboons are baboons and they do what they know best especially when it comes to raiding and destruction
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman once said productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it is almost everything. Zimbabwe’s situation is now too clear as seen by the recent poor company earnings and more recently Government’s attempt to salvage the little revenue they can get from consumption.
The manufacturing sector is dominated by aged firms that are a shrunken version of their former self through loss of size, capital and the ability to export.
The problems facing this economy are all too visible and I am happy that even the Government or at least some part of it, is beginning to see this and there is a more real approach to economic issues.
Companies are under huge stress, weighed down by high overheads with some moving towards trading imported goods shifting away from production.
Of immediate concern to Government should be the short term health of existing businesses. How many companies are going to open in January?
Generally, for illiquid firms, productivity is strongly constrained by the availability of internal finance.
So what should Government do?
Re-engagement and policies that increase export competitiveness perhaps. Of course re-engagement with the West will take some time and for now we just have to make do with the close ties we enjoy with the friendly nations.
The question is how we can get the economy back to the good old days in terms of FDIs.
The issue of debt is a much bigger problem because debt of over 100 percent of GDP has implications on social expenditures. It’s also the reason why there is no fiscal space.
We find ourselves in that state of uncertainty. I will summarise an article that appeared in one of the online financial news services.
The article talks about the village of Chibagwe. See a long time ago, a thriving agricultural village named Chibagwe existed.
Chibagwe was renowned for the huge quantity of maize it produced. With the surplus it replenished its reserves before selling the rest to other communities.
With the income the village set it’s artisans to work, building roads, hospitals and other infrastructure. The village prospered and the residents of Chibagwe were invariably happy.
But then after some time, baboons starting coming from the bushes to raid the maize fields. While the villagers of Chibagwe took note, no alarm was raised by the moving in of these new neighbours.
Everyone was busy with the activities of the times, the chief and his royal enclave caught up in their self importance and their now traditional routine of taking foreign dignitaries through their thriving community.
The hard working farmers, busying themselves with the crop, the artisans running around repairing anything broken and the women playing their supporting roles admirably well consumed everyone’s waking hour.
The whole community was distracted.
Baboons are baboons and they did what they know best and raided the maize fields.
It was not difficult to decipher the architects of this episode as stalks of maize were strewn on the ground all the way back to the colony of baboons.
Amid the resulting mayhem the village chief gathered the elders along with the farmer’s leadership to deliberate on this new threat.
A whole host of solutions were proffered none of which was adopted.
The village elders wanted more time to deliberate, while the artisans could not be bothered as they felt it was not their fight.
The farmers themselves were split into two camps, the ones who had suffered loss, agitated for an attack on the troop of baboons and the ones who had been spared, warned of overreaction.
The weary chief finally called the council to order and asked if anyone was prepared to stand guard at night protecting the fields, arguments erupted with few volunteers.
The chief upon advice adjourned the meeting to a later date to be advised agreeing only to form a committee to study the problem and report back to the chief.
While more meetings were called, no permanent solution was adopted with members of the committee fighting among themselves about the solution required to deal with the baboons.
Each farmer was on his own. So that year nothing was done to counteract the threat posed by these baboons, with villagers returning to their normal every day activities.
That year the maize harvest for the first time failed to meet expected targets.
The same pattern repeated itself and the baboon’s colony grew yet nothing was done about it.
The village elders began to introduce coupons to ration the little maize they could save from the marauding baboons.
It became inevitable that the system would be abused by those with access to it.
When the other villagers caught onto the acts of the less virtuous among them, it became a free for all, characterized by quarrels that often turned violent. The chief was not deaf to the villagers grumbling.
He was bitterly disappointed with the farmers for what he viewed as the capitulation in the face of a few obstacles.
To cut a long story short, there are many similarities to what is happening in this economy at the moment.
We have allowed baboons to take over the maize fields.
Instead of dealing with them we have gone after issues of lesser importance, avoiding to confront the problem head on.
The quasi Government institutions like ZESA, NSSA, ZINARA, ZINWA, GMB, and Air Zimbabwe all gyrate to the same lullabies.
Some would argue, the baboons have long deserted some of these institutions disgusted at the absence of “maize fields”.
Senior management obscenely overpaid, while the smaller fish search and find their little niches by which they too can live the good life.
Who can deny, passing on the odd note to the ZESA meter man when he comes by to switch off electricity citing the unpaid utility bill.
It’s all there for everyone to see, repeating it would be to state the obvious.
However it’s high time, Government deals with the real issues and stop putting forward measures that will help them just for a day, a week or a month as enunciated in the mid-term policy statement.