By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

EDDIE Cross and John Robertson have been in the fore-front of the group of economists and economic reporters who argue that the sole reason why Zimbabwe should not introduce and use its own money for the foreseeable future is widespread ‘lack of confidence’ in the leadership of the country’s financial institutions, especially because of what happened in those institutions and what happened to the Zimbabwean dollar between 2007 and 2008.
It is a demonstration of the imbedded stubbornness of the Rhodesian rump that white Rhodesians, who created the MDC opposition and used it to invite illegal Anglo-Saxon sanctions on the country way back in 2000 can turn around in 2014 and accuse African leaders of the same country’s financial institutions of destroying confidence in those institutions between 2007 and 2008!
When did these Rhodies have confidence in the African leadership of those institutions?
Was the invitation to Britain, the US and EU to impose illegal sanctions on the country meant to build confidence in the leadership of our financial institutions in the first place?
Were illegal economic sanctions in 2000 meant to build confidence?
An examination of the role of the Rhodesian rump in Zimbabwean affairs shows that the crisis of hyperinflation from 2007-2008 is used merely as the latest and most convenient pretext for the pursuit of an otherwise enduring racial cause and class interest which existed long before 2007-2008.
This argument can now be extended and expanded, using the example of Cross.
In 1955 African nationalist youths in Rhodesia formed the Youth League which was open to progressive white youths willing to oppose Rhodesian apartheid. Cross was a youngster just like the African members of the League.
He did not join or support them because he could not have confidence at all in the idea.
In 1957, the Youth League joined other progressive organisations to form the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress (SRANC), which again welcomed progressive people from other racial and ethnic groups.
Cross did not join the SRANC because he could not have confidence in such an idea.
However, one Guy Clutton-Brock joined the SRANC and was welcomed.
The state banned the SRANC in 1959 and detained those whites who supported it.
The Africans formed the National Democratic Party (NDP) in 1960, but Cross did not join it the way some progressive white youths did.
The state again banned NDP in 1961 and the Africans formed the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) the same year.
The following year, 1962, ZAPU was banned.
In 1963 the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) was formed as a splinter from the banned ZAPU.
Later on ZANU formed an armed wing called the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) in exile while ZAPU also set up the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZPRA).
In 1976, ZANU and ZAPU formed the Patriotic Front which became the precursor to the Unity Accord of 1987.
In my own research in the late 1980s, I identified more than 140 white men and women who supported or attempted to support the African liberation movement from 1955 to 1980, whites who expressed confidence or tried to build white confidence in African leadership.
Cross was not one of them.
The actions the colonial regime took against the 140 white men and women included deportation, visa withdrawal or denial, detention, restriction, harassment into exile, imprisonment and declaration that the individual was a prohibited immigrant.
Cross did not suffer any of these actions because he supported the repressive settler regime so much that he rose to positions of power within the colonial establishment.
The years which Madzimbahwe call the ‘Third Chimurenga’, involving the mobilisation of the African land reclamation movement and the creation of a revolutionary land tenure system in Zimbabwe remain the worst years from the thinking of Cross and the Rhodesian rump.
In fact the decision of the Rhodesian rump to conceive, sponsor and launch the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999 was made in direct opposition to the popular will and confidence of the people to reclaim and redeem their land.
During the Rhodesian era, Cross was a believer in the public sector in the form of parastatals.
He served as head of the Agricultural Marketing Authority (AMA) of Rhodesia which was a super-state enterprise in charge of coordinating and supervising other parastatals who were critical in supporting the white settler farmers who monopolised prime land stolen from Africans.
But after 1980, Cross made a complete round about turn and started campaigning against public entities and demanding the dismantling and selling of all parastatals precisely because they were now under African leadership.
So, Cross’s failure to have confidence in African leadership is not because of the financial crisis of 2007-2008.
Going back to Cross’s Sunday Mail article on June 1 2014, it is clear that his declaration on lack of confidence is similar to Ian Smith’s declaration that Africans would not rule this country “in a thousand years,” which was later reduced to “in my life time”.
He is saying the Rhodesian rump and white Western capital, which the rump would like to represent, will never have confidence in African leadership of central financial institutions in his lifetime in this country.
Therefore, Madzimbahwe may as well forget about a national currency of their own.
And the reason is not what happened between 2007 and 2008.
That is only a pretext.
If that were the real reason, we would have been able to point to a period when Cross sought to build confidence in African leadership through the years of his long life.
If lack of confidence were caused by the events of 2007-2008, Cross would be making an effort to rebuild that confidence and it would not take more than one month to restore such confidence.
The Rhodesian rump and all those Africans who use lack of confidence as the main reason for the absence of a national currency are in fact not talking about the same thing.
For the Rhodesians, expressing lack of confidence in African leadership is a life-time cause.
The ZEPARU economists dismissed in passing the view of the National Economic Consultative Forum that confidence in the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and a national currency could be restored in a matter of weeks. Perhaps they need to look at the history of the Great Depression in the USA and US President Franklin Roosevelt’s intervention beginning March 4 1933. Banks had shut down in 38 out of 50 states by March 4 1933.
On March 12 the President told the nation what he and Congress had agreed and that government was doing to reverse the emergency.
“The next day, March 13, the nation’s largest and strongest banks opened their doors; at the end of the day, customers had deposited more cash than they withdrew.
“The crisis was over.”
But that crisis had been precipitated in 1929.
The damage of five years to popular confidence was reversed in eight days!