ALLIANCE for the People’s Agenda leader Dr. Nkosana Moyo was one of the presidential candidates in the July 2018 elections. ZOOMZimbabwe caught up with him this past week for a discussion.
In this wide-ranging interview, ZOOMZimbabwe gathers his perspective on the current state of Zimbabwean politics and the economy. How did we get here, and how could we possibly get out of this situation? What lessons do we learn from the July 2018 elections?
Dr. Nkosana Moyo also weighs in on the hired private jet for former First Lady Grace Mugabe, the sanctions, the ZEC Chair Judge Priscilla Chigumba, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube’s budget statement and the whole spectrum of government policies.
Below are the excerpts from the interviews:
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Greetings Dr. Nkosana Moyo. Things are clearly not well in Zimbabwe at the moment. Where did we get it wrong as a country? What do we need to do as a country?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: Greetings. We need to be clear what the problem in our country is. Our country is facing problems primarily at two levels.
The first level of problems facing our country is corruption. Our country is being destroyed by corruption. The second level of problems is that we have put people in jobs that they cannot do: meritocracy.
When you send your child to a school, you expect your child to get a proper education on the basis of teachers that have been trained and who know what they are doing. When you send your family member to a hospital, you expect your family member to get proper medical attention, based on the fact that the staff that are attending to your family member are properly trained and experienced in what they are supposed to do. When you send your car for service or maintenance, you expect that the company to which you send your car to employ technically competent people who have been trained and have been supervised to fix cars.
I can name any number of careers and professions where we take this for granted. But when it comes to running our country, for some reason we suspend this understanding that people need to be trained for the jobs that they are doing. If we fix these two – corruption and meritocracy – our country will run better.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Is the current leadership of our country doing enough to fight corruption?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: It is clear to everybody that that’s not the case. The question to then to ask is why is the leadership appearing incapable or unwilling to tackle corruption. Does it mean that the leadership themselves are compromised?
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Still on corruption, we have had cases of lawyers who are members of the opposition defending ZANU-PF officials in courts. What is your take on that?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: Even at war, medical teams of the opposite party can attend to the wounded of their enemies. The lawyers are in a similar situation where they should defend whoever it is who needs legal services. That’s my understanding of how the legal profession is supposed to work.
In a functioning society, an individual is deemed innocent until proven guilty. Yes there will be an allegation, but the full course of the law should be taken without prejudging; we should let the courts follow a due process until the case is proven one side or another.
It’s important to follow due process until that individual is proven innocent or convicted. We should be careful and avoid kangaroo courts where we judge people who might be innocent.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Dr Nkosana Moyo, what is your view on the 2019 budget statement presented by Professor Mthuli Ncube? Is it a good document?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: We as a country have never had a problem with writing good documents. Whatever it is, we write good documents. Our problem is implementation.
My suspicion actually is that we write these documents without intent: we write these documents without ever intending to implement them. We are not honest. I keep saying when electing or hiring people… promises: anybody can make. Manifestos: Anybody can write.
The only thing that will tell you the truth whether somebody is capable of delivering on promises, look at their track record. Have they ever worked anywhere where people recognized their expertise and said, ‘this person is a professional, they know their job, they got promoted and given other jobs elsewhere… Let’s look at our people in that way.
When we start doing that, we will elect people who can run our country better; people with a track record of making promises and delivering on them; making company budgets and plans and delivering on them. But when we ignore delivery track record, we end up with exactly what we have got.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: What about sanctions? Do they have an impact on Zimbabwe’s economic recovery?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: Of course when a country is under sanctions, the sanctions have an impact. But we need to know that we have destroyed our country. Firstly, we were very unstrategic. Why were sanctions applied on Zimbabwe? When you are managing a country or your own life, you need to understand the interests of other people who are operating in the same space as you do. And if they are stronger and bigger than you, if you are unstrategic about what you say or do, they are going to hammer you.
As they always say, the biggest gorilla sleeps where he likes. So if you walk into a lion’s den and get eaten, who is being stupid? Are you going to blame the lion for eating you? When you are a general and then you declare war on an army that is much stronger than you and then it destroys your army, you cannot then turn around and say the war was fair. What does that mean? As you go out and declare war on other people, you need to take account of their strengths, your strength and tactics. When you get defeated, it means you failed as a general. That’s point number one about the issue of sanctions.
Point number two is that when you look at the history of Rhodesia and South Africa, countries that came from the UDI and the Boers in South Africa, and the world applied sanctions on them, their economies never sunk to the level that Zimbabwe has come to.
So we need to look more broadly at what we have done ourselves, over and above the issue of sanctions. We have destroyed our country because of lack of application of meritocracy, and because of corruption. These two – corruption and sanctions – are within our control. But why are we not doing something about it? So let’s stop ask about what other do, because it’s beyond our control beyond a certain strategic level, but corruption and meritocracy are well within our control. So, why are we not doing something about it?
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Dr Moyo, what is your take on the proposed national transitional authority or the Government of National Unity (GNU)? Will it help us as a nation?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: A GNU can work, but one thing we need to pay a lot of attention to is that Zimbabweans are too presidential. Ultimately, the honest truth is that there is only one position in Zimbabwe which we as Zimbabweans need to pay a lot of attention as to who occupies that position. That position is the Head of State.
Because our institutions are still weak, the Head of State has to protect those institutions to make sure they function properly, and that these institutions including the army understand what’s expected of them. The Head of State has got to select the correct team a Cabinet level to make sure that
So, no matter what kind of government we put in place – whether it’s a GNU or a winner-takes-all, a transitional authority… the paramount question remains who is presiding over it? What track record and competency do they have? How honest is the person? What kind of leadership do they have? That is the key question we need to pay attention to, not whether we have a GNU or a transitional authority etc.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: What kind of governance system does APA stand for?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: Alliance for the People’s Agenda (APA) stands for a government whose responsibility is to change the welfare of the people of Zimbabwe, by creating a country that is peaceful, that respects institutions, where state institutions are genuinely state institutions are genuine and not captured by a party.
These institutions should protect the rights of Zimbabweans When you as a Zimbabwean are driving around in the country and the police stop you, their whole behaviour should be such that it does not make a difference whether you are a member of the ruling party, a member of no party at all, or a member of the opposition. The way you are treated as a Zimbabwean must be indifferent or the same as if you were a member of the ruling party. That’s institutionalism. We believe in transparency.
The only sure way of making sure that a government of the day does the right things is if the press has got a free hand to expose what is going on, when the press keeps the government of the day on its toes and on the straight and the narrow.
We believe in meritocracy. In the public sector, everybody who gets a job must be somebody who deserves the job because they are competent and trained in what needs to be done. That is the only way Zimbabwe can be a leading country in every way including the economy.
We believe in a government that follows the Constitution rigorously. If there is anything in the Constitution that needs to be revised, the government ought to take it to the people or to Parliament as representatives of the people, rather than for the government to just wake up and choose to ignore the Constitution. So we believe in Constitutionalism.
We believe in proper, professional behaviour in institutions of government. We absolutely abhor corruption. And through these values and attitudes, we would create a country which is peaceful, prosperous, and which is inclusive in its behaviour and treatment of minorities. By behaving this way, we believe that our country and society would attain its rightful place in the global community.
So APA is all about creating a prosperous, peaceful country, and a country that is respected globally through running its own affairs in a manner that is compliant with meritocracy, constitutionalism, transparency and no corruption in the system.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: In your view, is the current regime different from President Robert Mugabe’s administration? Is President Emmerson Mnangagwa genuine when he says he is leading a new dispensation?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: There are two ways to look at this. The first way is to give him the benefit of doubt and say he is genuine in wishing to do things differently, but his experience or lack of it gets in the way and he is not capable of delivering.
Another way is to say he was part of the Mugabe system and therefore we have no basis for believing that he is any different.
Ultimately, these two possibilities actually unfortunately lead to exactly the same result: we are not going to see any difference. We are going to continue the same way as we were before November 2017.
The only sensible way forward is to get a new person who will do things differently. Take what happens in the private sector. The private sector has incredible clarity that when a team of managers under-performs and the company does badly ,you get rid of all of them and get a new team to turn around the company.
Our situation is that a lot of people, for reasons I do not understand, expect the same team that destroyed the country to be able to turn it around. I have not seen it happen anywhere else. Maybe Zimbabwe will be the first, but we’ll wait and see.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Going back to the issue of the national transitional authority, don’t you honestly think it is the best way forward?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: Let me say this: it does not matter what form of government we put in place. Ultimately the quality of our government will depend on who is our President.
We are still at a very young stage of building our institutions, and in these situations, the person who is the President essentially gives direction and most institutions under him will just follow.
Let me give an example. We have to acknowledge that President Mnangagwa gave a direction about how the elections were to be conducted insofar as violence was concerned. For the first time in our post-independence period, Zimbabwe had the most peaceful campaign period ever.
Just because the President said so, the institutions like the police and the army followed, and there was peace throughout the campaign period simply because President Mnangagwa had given an instruction.
But I don’t think President Mnangagwa signalled to the Chairperson of Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) in a similar manner because her behaviour was appalling because she did not get an explicit instruction to act in a manner that would deliver a free and fair election. But on the violence side during the campaign period he gave an explicit sign that violence was not to be tolerated and the signal was followed.
If appointees like ZEC Chair think that the President expects them to do him favours, that’s what they do unfortunately. Mnangagwa hides behind a finger and says he does not control ZEC because they are independent, which we all know to be rubbish. The judiciary, ZEC and so on will behave in a way that they implicitly read from what the President’s attitude towards their work is. If they think that he expects them to do him favours in a country such as ours with young institutions, that’s what they do unfortunately.
So the ultimate question in a young democracy like ours is: who is our President? As long as we have a President who does not understand that he is President of everyone in the country, we will always be in trouble, whether we have an NTA or GNU or winner-takes-all leadership.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Coming to the 2% money transfer tax… Will it help spur economic growth or it will be misused by government?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: On the 2% tax, my view is that Mthuli Ncube misguided himself. He should have focused on reducing government spending by creating more spending room by raising more money and overtaxing Zimbabweans. So, this is totally misguided, it’s not going to help Zimbabweans in any way. It will reduce Zimbabweans’ purchasing power, and their the demand pull on growing the economy will disappear. And Zimbabweans will look to purchase goods and services from where they are cheaper than in Zimbabwe. So Mthuli got it absolutely wrong, and my suspicion is hat he knows it too.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Some people including Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube have mentioned the adoption of the South African Rand as a solution to our economic challenges. Is it a viable option to take, in your view?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: If Zimbabwe today adopts any current we like, assuming the owners of that currency allow us, we still will not succeed because the currency has never been our problem. Our problem is the abuse of the currency. We killed the Zimbabwean dollar through misbehaving and printing money as if it was going out of fashion, in a manner that was not related to the liquidity demands of the economy or the growth of the economy.
We are doing the same with the US dollar.
Whether we switch to the US dollar, Euro, Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, South African Rand… it makes no difference. Until we demonstrate responsibility in the management of the economy, whatever currency we adopt, we will still abuse it and debase it. The starting point is responsible management of an economy, and responsible behaviour and use of a currency. That is where our solution lies, not on what currency we are using.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Dr. Moyo, what is your take on the issue that President Mnangagwa hired an expensive plane for former First Lady while people were dying with cholera?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: My understanding is that neither President Mnangagwa nor the government hired the plane, and that a private businessman. Let’s not be speculative. If we are going to be credible people, let’s deal with facts we know, and express our opinions on those. Let’s not deal with things we do not know, or are unproven and even contested, because then, our credibility will suffer.
But like I said, the money used to hire a private plane for Grace Mugabe when her mother died was not government money, it was not authorized by the President, but that a private businessman did that. If I am wrong, please let me know what the facts are.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Do you believe the sentiment that some citizens are sabotaging the economy for personal gain?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: I am not aware that citizens are sabotaging the economy; I would guess that citizens are doing everything they can to support themselves and their families. But because the government is not addressing their plight, the citizens will have to everything they can in order to survive.
Let me give you a simple example. I don’t see any justification whatsoever that politicians should not be paying tollgate fees. I think politicians like any other citizens should pay their taxes and toll fees so that they lives as everybody else, and when they make rules and regulations legislation and so forth, then those things need to apply to them as well. Only then will things be done properly.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Do you think the Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube agrees with the way President Mnangagwa’s administration is doing things?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: The question about Professor Mthuli Ncube is for him to answer. I left because I felt I was not prepared to serve a government that did things in a manner that was so unacceptable to me. It’s up to Mthuli to behave in a manner that tells us as observers whether he agrees or not. My view is that if you stay in a system that is doing things in a particular way, then the implication is that you agree with the way the system is doing things.
If you disagree with the fundamentals of what that system is doing, then you get out. That is my view. But I think this question should be addressed to Mthuli himself.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: With the way the economy is in a shambles, how can the youths be able to start successful businesses?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: If the whole economy is imploding, the likelihood of the youths starting businesses and becoming successful is very small. So I think the environment is not conducive for the youths to start businesses and become successful The environment is not conducive to businesses becoming successful in Zimbabwe at the moment.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: There is a sentiment that inasmuch as the government has failed, what has killed the economy is the issue of speculators. Fuel, groceries, beverages, forex and so on are available in the country but the problem is speculators who hold onto to these for speculative gains. How big is that issue in the scheme of things?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: In financial terms, we talk about arbitrage. That which simply means when you create circumstances where there is a sufficient differential which creates an opportunity for people to make money, they will take a position which allows people to make money. So the issue of speculation and arbitrage is not something that should concern us; what should concern us is why is our government behaving in a manner where these circumstances arise, which people, being rational, are then taking advantage of. That is the question to deal with: why is the government behaving in a manner that allows speculation and arbitrage?
ZOOM Zimbabwe: In concluding, what is it Zimbabweans need to do going forward?
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: We have a government which has just come into being, and that government has got a mandate for fives years. The best we can do is to learn from our actions so that in future we deliver a different result. Let’s take it at face value: Zimbabweans through a democratic election chose the current government.
I could argue that the evidence was there that this government could not deliver, but Zimbabweans chose this government. So what is going on now is simply for Zimbabweans to open their eyes so that they know how to process the options placed before them in future.
When politicians make promises in future, Zimbabweans need to be more diligent in processing the promises being made. If the majority of our citizens chose this way, then we as a nation chose this way. Democracy is a collective process.
Next time we as a nation, hopefully the majority of us, will consider the options available and make the best choice to avoid a repeat of what is happening.
What is happening right now should not surprise anybody, because the party that is running the country has run the country with the same people for the past 38 years. Same people! So, the basis for us to have expected them to do any different is what has to be asked of us. What was our consideration?
We as a nation made a bed, and we must lie on it. We have to put up with the consequences of our decisions and learn from that so that hopefully we don’t repeat the same mistake in future.
ZOOM Zimbabwe: Thank you very much Dr. Nkosana Moyo.
Dr. Nkosana MOYO: Thank you very much.
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