Competing Explanations of Zimbabwe's Long Economic Crisis

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Notes

¹ For more on these themes, see Bond, Uneven Zimbabwe; Bond & Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge; Bond, “Transition Dangers and Opportunities for Zimbabwe's Economy and Society”; Bond, “Zimbabwe's Hide and Seek with the IMF”; and Bond & Saunders, “Labor, the State and the Struggle for a Democratic Zimbabwe.”

² S. Power, “How to Kill a Country.” Atlantic Monthly, December 2003, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200312/power (accessed 4 April 2007).

³ Kansteiner, “Testimony Before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.”

⁴ Davies, “Memories of Underdevelopment,” 32, 37.

⁵ Moyo & Yeros, “Land Occupations and Land Reform in Zimbabwe.”

⁶ Moore, “Zimbabwe's Triple Crisis.”

⁷ USAID/Zimbabwe, Operational Plan, 4.

⁸ Transcript provided in Bond, “Zimbabwe at the Crossroads.”

⁹ “Shamuyarira accused of Cheap Politicking over ESAP.” Daily News, 31 October 2001.

¹⁰ “Mass Media Project of Zimbabwe (2005).” The Zimbabwean, 29 April 2005 (“Media Watch”).

¹¹ “UK, US ‘caused Zimbabwe droughts.’ ” BBC Online, 28 June 2005, http://news.bbc.uk/2/hi/africa/4630443.stm (accessed 6 June 2007).

¹² Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Intiative, Harare, 2–3 September 1999: “Zimbabwe Opening National Sapri Forum,” http://www.saprin.org/zimbabwe/zimbabwe_forum1.htm (accessed 3 April, 2007).

¹³ A partial list merely since 2000 includes Moore & Leddy, Zimbabwe; Moore, Suffering for Territory; Raftopoulos & Savage, Zimbabwe; McKinley, “South African Foreign Policy towards Zimbabwe under Mbeki”; Phimister & Raftopoulos, “Mugabe, Mbeki and the Politics of Anti-Imperialism”; Raftopoulos, “Nation, Race and History in Zimbabwean Politics”; Raftopoulos, “Zimbabwe Now”; Ranger, “Nationalist History, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation”; Campbell, Reclaiming Zimbabwe; Hammer et al., Zimbabwe's Unfinished Business; Manyanya, NEPAD's Zimbabwe Test; Ranger, The Historical Dimensions of Democracy and Human Rights in Zimbabwe; Booysens, “In the Crossfire of Wars of Political Survival”; Nhema, Democracy in Zimbabwe; Raftopoulos, “Briefing: Zimbabwe's 2002 Presidential Election”; Sachikonye, “Whither Zimbabwe?”; Taylor, “Zimbabwe and the Death of Nepad”; Yeros, “Zimbabwe and the Dilemmas of the Left”; Ajulu, “Zimbabwe at the Cross Roads - What Next?”; Bhebe, The Historical Dimensions of Democracy in Zimbabwe; Dansereu, Labor, Capital and Society; Moore, “Democracy is Coming to Zimbabwe”; Moore, “Is the Land the Economy and the Economy the Land?”; Nest, “Ambitions, Profits and Loss”; Raftopoulos & Sachikonye, Striking Back; Rutherford, Working on the Margins; Yeros, Labor Struggles for Alternative Economics in Zimbabwe; Alexander et al., Violence and Memory; Alexander, “The Zimbabwean Working Class, the MDC and the 2000 Election”; Bowyer-Bower & Stoneman, Land Reform in Zimbabwe; Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe and Legal Resources Foundation, Breaking the Silence, Building True Peace; Chattopadhyay, “Zimbabwe”; Dashwood, Zimbabwe; Kriger, “Zimbabwe Today”; Moore, “The Alchemy of Robert Mugabe's Alliances”; Moyo, Land Reform and Structural Adjustment in Zimbabwe; Moyo, “The Political Economy of Land Acquisition and Redistribution in Zimbabwe”; Moyo et al., NGOs, the State and Politics in Zimbabwe; Saunders, Never the Same Again and Zimbabwe: Human Development Report 1999.

¹⁴ Ranger, “Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation.”

¹⁵ Iliffe, Africans, 187, 202.

¹⁶ Bundy, “The Presence of History.”

¹⁷ Raftopoulos & Phimister, “Zimbabwe Now.”

¹⁸ Personal communication, 9 November 2004. See also Brenner, “The Economics of Global Turbulence,” 102–111, Figure 8, Table 9; and Brenner, “New Boom or New Bubble,” 65–69.

¹⁹ For the purposes of measurement, I constructed a proxy based on inventory stocks drawn from the manufacturing sector in the annual, quite reliable Census of Industrial Production series, and documented overaccumulation during the 1970s in Bond, Uneven Zimbabwe, Chapters 5–6. The results are summarized below.

²⁰ Clarke, Keynesianism, Monetarism and the Crisis of the State, 279–360; Mandel, “Theories of Crisis”; Shutt, The Trouble with Capitalism, 34–45; Biel, The New Imperialism, 131–189; and Harvey, The New Imperialism.

²¹ World Bank, “Staff Appraisal Report,” 9.

²² For a review, see Burdette & Davies, “The Zimbabwe Economy.”

²³ Riddell, “Zimbabwe,” 352–353.

²⁴ Davies, “Discussion Note on Chapter 13.”

²⁵ Central Statistical Office, Census of Production 1979/80, 21; RAL, Executive Guide to the Economy.

²⁶ Davies, “Discussion Note on Chapter 13,” 300.

²⁷Ibid.

²⁸ Davies & Stoneman, “The Economy,” 95–96.

²⁹ Wield, “Technology and Zimbabwean Industry,” 128, 107.

³⁰ CSO (various years), National Income and Expenditure Report.

³¹ Stoneman, “The Economy,” 281.

³² de Janvry, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America; Nixson, “Import-Substitution Industrialization,” 50.

³³ There was a single Zimbabwean researcher who put a finger on the theoretical basis for the crisis of manufacturing overaccumulation—if only partially and momentarily—and it is worth recording this. Angela Cheater examined “Zimtex” (a pseudonym for a major textile firm in the Midlands), and discovered a clear “crisis of overproduction” in the early 1980s: Cheater, The Politics of Factory Organization, 143–149.

³⁴ The Centre for African Studies printed a series of statements of local business leaders, who, from mid-1976, finally established that “white-minority rule is an anachronism.” Centre of African Studies, “Zimbabwe.”

³⁵ World Bank, “Zimbabwe: Private Investment and Government Policy,” 44; World Bank, “Zimbabwe: Agriculture Sector Memorandum,” 5. Other data noted in subsequent paragraphs are sourced from Bond, Uneven Zimbabwe.

³⁶ These included Leon Tempelsman & Son, Johnson & Johnson International, Ford Motor, Caltex, Xerox, Westinghouse, Ingersoll-Rand Company, Mobil, NCR Corporation, General Motors, Goodyear, Union Carbide Southern Africa, and PepsiCo.

³⁷ World Bank, “Zimbabwe: Private Investment and Government Policy,” 44.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ As a reflection of the (inflation-adjusted, Z$1980) effective demand shrinkage over this period, private final consumption expenditure, which had reached Z$382 per capita in 1983, sunk to Z$226 in 1987, a decline of 41%.

⁴⁰ Sachikonye, “Industrial Relations and Labor Relations under ESAP in Zimbabwe,” 144.

⁴¹ World Bank, “Zimbabwe: Achieving Shared Growth,” 6.

⁴² Ibid., 121–123.

⁴³ Ibid., 129–130.

⁴⁴ World Bank, “Zimbabwe: Private Investment and Government Policy,” 23.

⁴⁵ Ndlela, “Sectoral Analysis of Zimbabwe's Economic Development,” 72.

⁴⁶ World Bank, “Zimbabwe: Private Investment and Government Policy,” 23, 56.

⁴⁷ World Bank, “Report and Recommendation of the President of the IDA to the Executive Directors on a Proposed Credit in an Amount Equivalent to US$1.2 million,” 39.

⁴⁸ World Bank, “Report and Recommendation of the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development to the Executive Directors,” 13.

⁴⁹ World Bank, “Zimbabwe: A Strategy for Sustained Growth,” 70.

⁵⁰ Riddell, Manufacturing Africa, 382.

⁵¹ Details are provided in these reports by Patrick Bond: “ZSE: Bears run Amok,” Africa South, May 1992; “Grim Economic Tales for 1992: The Only Strength is in the Speed of the Corporate Chicken Run,” “Say Hullo to the ‘Zimkwacha’: Foreign Exchange Fix might Repress the Symptoms of Adjustment Fatigue,” “Counting the Rising Prices,” Africa South, February 1992; “Throwing the Land to the Market,” “SAP: Chidzero goes for Broke,” Africa South, May 1991; “Zimbabwe: The Undecided Economy,” “Riding the Waves of Uneven Prosperity,” “The Zimbabweans,” “Land Reform: Art of the Impossible,” Africa South, May–June 1990.

⁵² World Bank, “Zimbabwe: A Strategy for Sustained Growth.” For interpretations, see Cliffe, “Were they Pushed or did they Jump?”; Dashwood, “The Relevance of Class to the Evolution of Zimbabwe's Development Strategy.”

⁵³ World Bank, “Project Completion Report: Zimbabwe: Structural Adjustment Program,” 35.

⁵⁴ A list from the original document might include these claims:Reaching 5% growth annually, the economy would have grown in excess of 4.3% for eight consecutive years (1988–95)—in spite of the fact that the longest stretch of positive growth since 1973 had been just three years.The overall budget deficit would shrink to 5% of GDP.Although Zimbabwe's foreign debt would initially increase from US$2.4 billion in early 1991 to a projected US$4 billion in 1995, repaying the debt would become easier.The debt service ratio (repayments as a percentage of export earnings)—which peaked at 35% in 1987 and fell to 24% in 1990—would drop further, to 18.5% by 1995, in spite of the addition of US$3.5 billion in new loans in the intervening years (while US$1.9 billion would be repaid).Private-sector investment would rapidly overtake government investment, doubling from levels of the late 1980s.Total investment, which averaged less than 20% of GDP from 1985–90, would reach 25% by 1993 and remain there.Inflation, running at 20% in early 1991, would be down to 10% by 1994.Relative to the rest of the economy, exports would grow by about one third from late 1980s levels; specifically, mining exports would increase from less than US$400 million in 1990 to more than US$500 million in 1994, manufacturing exports would double from US$400 million in 1988 to US$800 million in 1995, and agricultural exports, which were in decline since 1988, would grow steadily through 1995.Except for 1991, Zimbabwe would have better terms of trade in its dealings with the world economy over the subsequent five years.New direct foreign investment would flood in (US$30 million a year from 1992–95), notwithstanding the fact that such investment flooded out during the 1980s.

⁵⁵ Further statistical information is provided in Bond, Uneven Zimbabwe.

⁵⁶ For example, as recounted in Bond & Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge, I took up these issues with Eric Bloch in a lengthy Zimbabwe Independent debate in early 2001.

⁵⁷ World Bank, “Project Completion Report: Zimbabwe: Structural Adjustment Program,” 7.

⁵⁸ Wetherell, I. “Good Governance: Separating the Reality and the Rhetoric.” Financial Gazette, 9 June 1993.

⁵⁹ ZCTU, Beyond ESAP, 3.

⁶⁰ Gibbon, “Introduction,” 13.

⁶¹ World Bank, “Project Completion Report: Zimbabwe: Structural Adjustment Program,” 163.

⁶² ZCTU, Beyond ESAP, 52.

⁶³ Ibid., 49.

⁶⁴ World Bank, “Project Completion Report: Zimbabwe: Structural Adjustment Program,” 20.

⁶⁵ Raftopoulos, “Reflections on Democratic Politics.”

⁶⁶ Raftopoulos, “The Zimbabwean Crisis and the Challenges for the Left,” 11; citing Hall, “Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,” 419.

⁶⁷ Raftopoulos, “The Zimbabwean Crisis and the Challenges for the Left.”

⁶⁸ MDC, “Statement.”

⁶⁹ E Cross, “Learning Curve,” email communication to Patrick Bond, 23 February 2006.

⁷⁰ Reuters, “Zimbabwe would collapse if expelled from IMF: Mbeki,” 15 October 2005.

⁷¹ Private-sector creditors presently dealing with Zimbabwe typically arrange various forms of security with corporate debtors, because the government's likelihood of nonpayment was demonstrated since 1999.

⁷² Mutambara, A. “Independence Day Message: The Case for the Resignation of the Zanu(PF) Government,” Harare, 18 April 2006.

⁷³ Maodza, T. “No to polls, says Pro-Senate MDC.” Daily News, 20 March 2006.

⁷⁴ Weisbrot, M. “The IMF has lost its influence.” International Herald Tribune, 22 September 2005.

⁷⁵ Saunders, Zimbabwe: Human Development Report 1999, 82.

⁷⁶ Chikwanha et al., “The Power of Propaganda,” 20.

⁷⁷ Interview with Patrick Bond, Johannesburg, 13 May 2005.