George Charamba is the Presidential Press Secretary, and Secretary for Information, Media and Broadcasting Services in the Republic of Zimbabwe. He wrote this article for The Sunday Mail Newspaper – Read Full Article (Part 1)

The multiple initiatives that President Emerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa’s administration has launched may be confusing to a citizenry already buffeted by years of debility and decline.

It is thus important to explain and place in context this flurry of initiatives, a good many of which may involve costs and foreign travel, but all of which are aimed at putting Zimbabwe on an even economic keel.

Key to understanding this broad strategy of many initiatives is appreciating that President Mnangagwa is re-framing the National Question beyond the rhetoric of liberation struggle and land reforms.

Not that both don’t matter to the whole recovery calculus.

No National Question excludes or turns its back on core considerations of national liberation, national sovereignty and the national land issue.

The three form a baseline triumvirate for the modern nation-state.

Yet the key is to restate and reframe these three core issues within a proper, scientific grasp of socio-economic conditions obtaining in Zimbabwe, and at this stage in her evolution.

As I write, such an exercise has become both necessary and urgent, all against challenges which our country Zimbabwe faces.

Economic nationalism

And as the man at the helm, President, Mnangagwa bears the responsibility of this redefinition.

President Mnangagwa’s Zimbabwe-is-open-for-business mantra and punchline summarises the reframing of the National Question under current national social conditions.

His emphasis on anchoring the National Question on business and investment may have inspired his recent remark in Abidjan, Ivory Coast that Zimbabwe has shifted from “hard nationalism” to “economic nationalism”.

There is thus a new vocabulary in the air designed to refocus and redirect national effort towards a pro-business, pro-marketplace culture, but all within strictures of national interest and proper, lawful and ethical business practices.

This, in my view, summarises the re-framing exercise.

But this summary has embedded interconnections which are very easy to miss, and a lot easier to throw pot-shots at for cheap electoral politicking.

National interest, which the President has been emphasising, provides a key link with the liberation ethos. We have been free and independent for nearly 38 years.

Our sense of nationalism and liberation cannot remain as it was in 1980 when we became free.

Those distinct and clear-cut demands and magnitudes of the 1980s today coalesce into this overarching notion we call national interest.

Simply put, it means taking decisions and doing things that positively redound to our common, collective good, all the time assuming that we remain a free and sovereign nation.

Time was when the National Question amounted to a call to arms. Then it morphed to consolidating our nation through national unity which we attained in 1987.

Setting aside the massive national social investments of the 1980s and 1990s, the National Question took us back to the struggle for our land.

That, too, got settled, albeit with great acrimony and at huge national cost.

Beyond or because of land, we found ourselves back in the national trenches, thanks to the second challenge to our sovereignty by the West.

Still we deepened the National Question by raising the broader issue of resource nationalism. But there were serious setbacks and contradictions which precipitated the November 2017 16-day wonder revolution.

Today, and in the context of the new dispensation, we face a new National Question: namely the promotion of business and investment in order to re-jig that same liberation ethos.

Another country

With a past in the national liberation struggle, and given his legal grounding, President Mnangagwa is a perfect human/leadership fit for this badly needed transition whose time has come.

The measure of the transition is in how it at once unleashes the entrepreneurial energy of the nation, while defending and upholding both its interests and its sense of law and morality.

Hence the concurrent, two-track rhetoric of business opportunities on the one hand, and zero tolerance on corruption on the other.

I emphasise this duality to lay to rest a misperception that cracking down on externalisation and some such corporate malfeasances, perforce contradicts the thrust to rally businesses – both local and global – for investments in the country to recover and grow the national economy.

Simply, the new ethos calls for fair, deserved reward to clean, lawful business initiatives by whomsoever.

Simply, too, the new ethos draws a cut-off point with a past where business behaviour was predatory and akin to liquidation, both of which left us anaemic.

We have to break with the bad past, and naming and shaming unorthodox business practices, apart from bidding for restitution, sends a clear signal that the past is another country.

Policy dimension

But the call for greater investments in the economy is not an open cheque. Current adversity must never breed desperation.

We are a well-endowed country, a proud people. We have interests; we ought to have plans and priorities.

The call for investments is thus predicated on key strategic national calculations meant to secure our national interest.

President Mnangagwa’s recent visit to Rwanda put all this to the fore. We need to have a national plan and strategy which is both policy-focused and spatially drawn.

The policy dimension sets out our national priorities based on our competitive edge and where we want to be in the next decade. It motivates players through a raft of incentives we offer to nudge itinerant capital towards desired areas.

Spatially speaking, we need a geographical national masterplan which locates given enterprises in certain parts of our country, consistent with our resource endowments and needs of those enterprises we hope to attract.

Above all, consistent with our wish for growth with justice, indeed for growth which lifts all our communities thereby consolidating our national cohesion.

More critically, the spatial masterplan must be backed up by efficient infrastructures which lower entry/establishment costs for business, thereby improving the ease-of-doing business.

Rwanda ensures that areas zoned for specific enterprise clusters are well enabled by way of infrastructure like roads, rail, electricity, water, information and communication technologies etc.

Equally, land is availed competitively for secure operations.

Both Rwanda and China have offered to assist in this broad planning exercise so sorely needed ahead of luring investments in the country.

This awareness and offer is a key take-away from the President’s recent itinerary. It needs to be actualised on the ground.