The ‘nonsensical’ debate on opening up markets

18 Jun, 2017 - 00:06 0 Views
The ‘nonsensical’ debate on opening up markets 17 Sep 1976, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania --- Pres. Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania at news conference at State House in Dar es Salaam. --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

The Sunday Mail

Darlington Musarurwa Business  Editor’s Brief
Through YouTube, most of the epoch-making Pan African giants such as Julius Nyerere, who passed away on October 14, 1999, become immortal. Alive.

And it makes it possible to tap from their ideals.

IT is often said people fear what they don’t understand, and hate what they fear — which is true.

One of the major episodes of global mass hysteria were caused by fears of the so-called “Y2K” (denotating the year 2000) bug, which essentially were founded on the unfounded belief that all computers — especially those storing year values as two digits — would crash as soon as the new millennium arrived.

It never happened.

There were also fears that technology, by virtue of being heavily prospective and not retrospective, would devalue traditional societal and cultural norms.

That, again, has not happened.

Instead, through the unique ability to freeze time, technology, through innovations such as YouTube, now has the ability to immortalise history’s key figures, particularly those who have since departed, in such a way that they speak to us in an intimate way as never before.

We get to appreciate them — in both sound and action — in ways that words in a book can never bring to life.

This is an archive and resource that should continue to be used to challenge the current global economic architecture and beliefs.

Through YouTube, most of the epoch-making Pan African giants such as Julius Nyerere, who passed away on October 14, 1999, become immortal. Alive.

And it makes it possible to tap from their ideals.

Zimbabwe’s anti-free

trade stance?

On Wednesday morning, June 14, 2017, eNCA Africa, a South African news service that is available on the Multichoice bouquet, had a very interesting interview with Mr Gideon Chitanga.

Mr Chitanga — a former local student activist studying for a doctorate at Rhodes University — had deep misgivings about Harare’s latest move to restrict maize imports.

Maize harvests for the 2016/2017 summer cropping season are expected to top 2,2 million tonnes, which will significantly cut the country’s import bill.

Estimates suggest that more than US$200 million — being the amount spent on grain imports last year — will be retained, or, more accurately, put in the pocket of local farmers, the majority of whom benefited under the Command Agriculture Scheme.

However, it is Chitanga’s reasoning that Zimbabwe, whose annual maize requirement stands at 1,8 million metric tonnes, has not reached the stage where it can shut its borders to grain imports.

But his major argument is grounded in the belief that Zimbabwe is going against the regional integration drive, where markets are supposed to open up.

Or is it the case?

Well, it is important to remember that the Tripartite-Free Trade Area Agreement (TFTA) — which brings together the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), the East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) was signed in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt on June 10, 2015 during the time President Mugabe was chair of the African Union (AU).

Also Sadc’s renewed industrialisation thrust was under his watch as Sadc chairperson.

But despite its efforts, Zimbabwe’s policies, including Statutory Instrument (SI) 64 of 2016, are often perceived as anti-free trade and anti-regionalisation.

Clearly, Mr Chitanga’s argument represents a neo-liberal worldview that believes countries, irrespective of their circumstances, must open up their markets to competition.

Despite these regional trade protocols, is it prudent for Zimbabwe, which is currently encumbered by sanctions from the United States government and the European Union bloc since the turn of the millennium, to open up its markets?

Nyerere rises from the dead

Perhaps the most brutally frank defence to Zimbabwe’s stance is provided by former Tanzanian president Dr Julius Nyerere’s speech that was made on Workers Day in 1995.

Thankfully, the moment has been immortalised by YouTube, and to witness the sound and fury with which the Pan-African leader deconstructs the three key tenets of neo-liberalism privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation.

In a searing and incendiary speech — woven in both Swahili and English — Nyerere was typically in his element as he put forward his views.

He spoke with passion and was unapologetic, too.

Suffice to say, he was gratingly abrasive.

Below we reproduce excerpts of the transcribed version of his speech:

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“. . . don’t listen to this nonsense that the State should give up the direction of the economy. It’s nonsensical.

“And we have so many stupid leaders who think to develop somehow you must handover the development of your country to something called private enterprise and regulate it. . .

“Who has done it: The Japanese have not done it, the British have not done it, the Germans have not done it. They meet; they will be meeting in Halifax in June(Business Editor’s note: G-7 meeting held from June 15-June17, 1995 in Canada). What for? To drink tea? What do you think they are going to do in Halifax?

The big seven are going to meet in Halifax — to do what?

To discuss how to control the economy. It’s not a meeting of bankers, it’s a meeting of Presidents and Prime Ministers on the economy. And these ignorant people in Africa being deceived, you know “leave it to the private sector”.

Where is the private sector? Where is the private sector in Tanzania to which you are going to leave this economy? Where is it? It means nothing, it means nothing before you can have it.

You see, this is how the Asian nations have done it.

So the Japanese did it. Korea, tough. Its only now there are beginning to open up their market.

How do you open up your market to big competing (firms) when you have no power to compete against big competition? This is ridiculous. It’s like. . . in the world of boxing, there are heavyweights, middleweights, flyweight, featherweight. Although the rules are the same, your put them separately, in separate rings — the heavyweights in their own ring, the middleweight in their own ring.

You don’t put in the same ring a heavyweight and featherweight. Never! Never! That is madness. But that is what the big seven are telling us to do.

That Germany and Burkina Faso should get in the same ring (laughs), and that is what is called globalisation, freedom, liberalisation. This is nonsense! This is absolutely nonsense.

You protect the weak so that they become strong before they can compete, always. This is the rule. It is the rule everywhere.

Our leaders, even if we tell them that, they can’t argue. You can’t say no? So where is the weakness?

Our own weaknesses, internal weaknesses; until we remove the weaknesses, we can’t begin to move.

Internal weaknesses are not the only problem: The problem is this pressure from the rich that we should open up our markets to competition. I am told we have open here for banking, for instance. Now, Tanzanian banking to compete with North American and European banking? This is nonsensical!

Can NBC (National Bank of Commerce Tanzania), is NBC free to open a branch in Europe? NBC?. . .

So when you are saying let’s be treated equally, are you really saying that this equality will give NBC the chance to open a branch in New York? This is rubbish!. . .

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