By Rutendo Matinyarare
ACCORDING to the World Bank, Zimbabwe’s black-controlled and owned economy grew faster than South Africa’s over the past 30 years, despite Zimbabwe being under illegal sanctions for the better part of 23 of those years.
The question that arises is why and how?
The reason is, Zimbabwe has educated black human capital that has been able to learn quickly (in just 43 years) how to manage an economy and keep the country sailing in the right direction. This is why, even though the white-controlled apartheid government fell to sanctions in just six years of imposition, the Zimbabwean Government has been more resilient, keeping Zimbabwe growing under more stringent sanctions for 23 years.
This illustrates that Zimbabwe is much better governed by blacks while South Africa was mismanaged by the white apartheid government that collapsed South Africa under sanctions (despite holding onto power for 340 years in South Africa), to a point where this gross misgovernance was categorised as a crime against humanity.
Most importantly, the prudent leadership of Zimbabwe’s Government put the control of factors of production, resources and the economy in the hands of its people. As a result, the value created by Zimbabweans is harvested and re-invested back into the economy, which creates capital accumulation.
Not only that, but the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) and its banks lend to black entrepreneurs, while South Africa banks discriminate to prevent Africans from competing with whites and gaining a foothold that could dislodge the settler regime.
Additionally, in South Africa, apartheid criminals and colonial settlers continue to control all factors of production, hence they exploit the country and externalise the excess value back to their ancestral homes in Europe. This drains the economy and erodes its ability to accumulate capital, re-invest, create additional value or pay off its high sovereign and household debt.
The above data is also empirical evidence that the value of a currency has no real bearing on economic growth or development, considering that within the past 23 years of the last 30-year period, Zimbabwe has had the worst-performing currency in the world, but it still had a higher human development index and created more wealth for its citizens, outgrowing the South African economy which has no sanctions and has a stable currency.
Finally, the data also illustrates that black-controlled economies in Africa outperformed the only predominantly white-controlled economy, despite white South Africans having controlled that economy for 372 years. So, irrespective of whites having had three centuries of experience governing South Africa, they have still failed to grow the economy better than former colonised black States.
This is unequivocal proof that whites are incompetent at managing developmental black States while blacks with, less than 65 years of independence and experience, are better equipped.
Whites fail to manage African States because they discriminate, under-develop the majority black human capital, and they gouge value from the African periphery back to their European centres, leaving behind poverty for Africans.
It is clear, therefore, from this data, that no African can ever develop under the blood-sucking mindset of the settler, and this should become the impetus for the ANC to unapologetically pursue radical economic transformation and reparations, to return the factors of production to blacks, to ensure capital accumulation and re-investment back into the country.
Nevertheless, despite the challenges that South Africa faces under this parasitic neo-colonial paradigm, the ANC, as a black government, without much control of the economy, was still able to take millions of South Africans out of destitution through their pro-black policies.
#DecolonizeSouthAfrica for progress!
Rutendo Matinyarare is chairman of ZASM. He writes in his personal capacity.
https://www.iamrutendo.online/post/zimbabwean-black-owned-and-managed-economy-grew-faster-than-south-africa-s-white-economy-over-30yr