The Zimbabwe economy

Excerpt from Letter From The President
ANC Today, Volume 7, No. 33 • 24—30 August 2007

By Thabo Mbeki, President, Republic of South Africa

The Summit Meeting also approved the urgent initiation of a process that would identify the measures that the SADC region should take to assist in the economic recovery of Zimbabwe. The report prepared by the SADC Secretariat in this regard says:
“The restoration of the country’s foreign exchange generating capacity through Balance of Payments support is crucial: however, the most urgent action that is needed to start this process is to establish lines of credit to enable Zimbabwe to import inputs for its productive sectors, particularly for agriculture and foreign currency generating sectors.
“SADC should do all it can to help Zimbabwe address the issue of sanctions, which is not only hurting the economy through failure to get BoP support and lines of credit, but also through reduced markets for its products. Sanctions also damage the image of Zimbabwe, causing a severe blow to her tourist sector.
“Zimbabwe on her part must continue to implement robust policies to reduce the overvaluation of the exchange rate, to reduce the budget deficit and to control the growth of domestic credit and money supply which fuel inflation, and to reduce price distortions in the economy. Equally important is the need to avoid frequent changes in policy initiatives, which have caused uncertainties and led to the view that the policy environment is unpredictable.”
In this regard, on Monday, August 20, the Business Day newspaper published a wholly fabricated story alleging that the SADC leaders were divided over this report, describing a discussion at the Summit Meeting that never took place. This is consistent with an unethical practice in sections of our media in terms of which they manufacture news and information and communicate complete fiction as the truth.
The newspaper manufactured an unbridgeable “rift” resulting in a non-existent paralysis among the leaders, arising out of the discussion that never took place. The fact of the matter is that, acting on the recommendation of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, (the Organ), the SADC Summit Meeting accepted the report on the Zimbabwe economy, as well as the proposal of the Organ that our Finance Ministers, in consultation with the Government of Zimbabwe, should use the report to elaborate specific interventions that could be made by our region.
The hostile allegation that our countries have recklessly turned their eyes away from the problems of Zimbabwe, because of the imperatives of solidarity, has always been nothing more than a product of propaganda, which all thinking persons would recognise as such. The reality is that in a very real sense the problems of Zimbabwe are our problems, in the same way that the problems of the rest of Southern Africa are problems for Zimbabwe as well. Our entire region stands to benefit most directly from the recovery of Zimbabwe, in much the same way as Zimbabwe benefits from the progress of the region of Southern Africa, of which it is an integral and inalienable part.
The Lusaka Summit Meeting reconfirmed these fundamental positions, which include unqualified respect for the sovereignty of Zimbabwe and the right of its people to determine their destiny. At no point will SADC and its member states act as a super-power that has the right to expropriate the people of Zimbabwe of their right to self-determination, as imperial Britain did.