By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

AMONG political parties and within political parties in Zimbabwe, there is already much jostling for alignments which are being sold as capable not only of winning the 2018 elections, but also ending the current economic depression.
Economic and business reporters are supposed to research the real causes of the economic depression and how the political alignments or re-alignments being touted ahead of 2018 could possibly end the depression.
This is not happening.
For the most part it is being assumed that political talks and re-alignments will naturally lead to a new economic dispensation that will end the depression simply because politicians are saying so.
There is no hard-nosed investigation to see how the proposed political solutions ahead of 2018 directly relate to current national economic challenges, let alone offer lasting solutions.
There are several layers to this problem: First, every political trickster’s plot does not constitute a new political dispensation.
So it cannot lead to a new economic dispensation.
Really profound political dispensations may lead to new economic solutions to existing challenges but the connection has to be explained, not assumed.
Journalists have subjected the people of this country to similarly false assumptions and promises before.
We can go back exactly eight years and discover that the inter-party talks between ZANU PF and the MDC formations as well as the formation of the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU) were greeted the same way with what I then called economic pentecostalism or pentecostal economics.
In the run-up to the 2018 elections in the context of the severe factionalisation of all political parties, the hard-nosed investigation and analysis of basic economic challenges will be abandoned even further in favour of the selling of political talks and alignments which will then be presented as the solution to unspecified, unexamined economic challenges.
In 2008 and 2009, Zimbabwe was subjected to a perceptual stampede by journalists in which the most desired and most widespread effect of the interparty talks and political agreement between ZANU PF and the two factions of the MDC was going to be an instant economic turn-around and an immediate improvement in the living conditions of the majority of the people.
While there is nothing wrong or criminal about journalists engaging in wishful thinking, in cheer-leading and morale-boosting – there is definitely something wrong if such a mode of communication is misrepresented as factual reporting or as scientific forecasting by ‘experts’.
Unfortunately for the public, the economic pentecostalism which originated in opposition campaigns in the run-up to the 2005 parliamentary elections and the March 2008 harmonised elections was transferred by journalists and editors from opposition campaign trails to the media’s marketing of the interparty talks.
In the MDC manifesto for the 2005 parliamentary elections, the opposition hid the fact that it was the party that invited the UK, the US and the EU to wage an illegal economic and propaganda war in the form of illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe. Instead, in its manifesto the MDC cynically declared:
“Our promise to the people of Zimbabwe: jobs, food, a sound economy, prosperous agriculture and livelihoods.”
This hoax continued in the March 2008 harmonised elections, but ZANU PF neglected to challenge it effectively.
However, since journalists and their media houses claim they exist to inform and educate the public by ‘telling the reality as it is’, one would expect that ZANU PF’s extraordinary delay in countering the MDC hoax would not matter and would do no harm because the journalists would do their job to show that an illegal financial and trade blockade imposed on the people of Zimbabwe at the request of the MDC could not be the basis for providing more jobs, food, a sound economy, prosperous agriculture and improving livelihoods for all the people, as promised by the same MDC formations!
But it was not only the opposition which misled the people.
The journalists and their editors also refused to live up to their claim to inform and educate the public by ‘telling the reality as it is’.
Therefore on July 24 2008, we found in The Financial Gazette under the column ‘National Report’ an uncontested verbatim statement by Morgan Tsvangirai entitled: ‘Morgan Tsvangirai speaks on MOU: The World Stands Ready to Join Us in Rebuilding our Nation’.
The last paragraph of that statement brought to the interparty talks period the same hoax contained in the March 2005 MDC manifesto:
“The heart of the entire world is broken by what has happened to our country (because of illegal sanctions invited by the opposition), and your bravery is praised among all peoples everywhere. The world stands ready to join us in rebuilding our nation and restoring what has been lost, once our peace and freedom are re-established.”
Two months later, on September 25 2008, MDC-T chairman and then Speaker of the Zimbabwe House of Assembly Honourable Lovemore Moyo repeated the same hoax, making it clear who in MDC-T thinking is meant by ‘the entire world’ whose heart ‘is broken’ for the sake of Zimbabwe and its people.
The Honourable Speaker attended the New Labour Party Congress in Manchester, UK, where he said:
“We look to our friends and comrades in the UK and around the (white Anglo-Saxon) world to help us rebuild our economy and institutions. We look forward to renewing links that have been broken (by the liberation movement of Zimbabwe) and to being welcomed back into the (British) Commonwealth family.”
What made this economic pentecostalism dangerous was that it was shared by journalists and by 2015-2016, it was shared by ZANU PF ministers with regard to so-called re-engagement with the West.
When we call this fantasy ‘economic pentecostalism’ we are not just being metaphorical.
Within the business sector and the religious community, there were staunch believers in pentecostal capitalism who, until the financial tsunami in Britain, the US and Europe, took seriously the miraculous scenario painted by Tsvangirai in his post-MoU message.
If we go back to June 2008, we can find the religious (Anglican) version of this miracle marketing.
The Venerable Reverend Archford Musodza of the Anglican Diocese of Botswana, Francistown, wrote on June 5 2008 that:
“Once MDC-T”s Tsvangirai takes the reigns in Zimbabwe, then all former (white settler) farmers are assured of a return to their farms. The (white-run) church will be restored and we can mobilise all Anglicans to now vote for a Bishop from Britain who is not polluted. The (British) Bishop will be mandated to return the church back to correct hands, the English Church, with proper British ethos.”
So we find that this false miracle-mongering is prevalent across a very significant minority of opinion makers in all sectors: Of all these false miracle-mongers, the most disturbing are the journalists and the so-called business experts and economists precisely because they are expected to base any forecasts on concrete and well-founded research and investigation.
Indeed the editor of The Financial Gazette on August 7 2008 did notice the risks involved in false miracle-mongering in an editorial called ‘Avoid crisis of expectations’.
“There is a danger, however, that the expectations being built around whatever political arrangement likely to emerge out of the negotiations might come back to haunt the nation if they are not fulfilled.”
Talks and promises made in talks do not constitute a new dispensation politically or in the economy.
Too much weight is still being placed on discussions with the IMF, the World Bank, the African Development Bank or Dangote and any other foreign player, at the expense of what we ourselves as Zimbabweans must do for ourselves.
Through skewed reporting and failure to research issues, journalists have worsened that tendency.