Our old men have failed to transform our socio economic and political systems from a colonial architecture into a modern democratic nation state. It is now our responsibility to do so.
Studying Ibbo Mandaza's paper titled; "Zimbabwe's journey: an overview and highlights of the last 200 years" which looks at the political economy of Zimbabwe in the last 200 years, really got me thinking.
In it, I was more interested in his views on the socio political dynamics in Zimbabwe's post-colonial era. These dynamics have fashioned the conditions that we now find undesirable, retrogressive and economically distressing. We therefore need to understand how and why they arose in order for us to obliterate them permanently.
He postulates that the failure of Zimbabwe to move beyond political rhetoric while basically relying on colonial institutional architecture inherited from the past is the key reason for our lack of progress. He talks about "the failure to address the economic realm in favour of an obsession with the political kingdom."
That is correct. To this day, our economy remains an extractive and labour intensive one chiefly because ZANU (PF) has dismally failed to think beyond the politics of partisanship and patronage. A typical manifestation of this is within our state enterprises which reflect the philosophies and habits that are holding us back.
The antagonistic and ill-informed push for indigenisation or empowerment is unfortunately another political project that seeks to strengthen political patronage and extend state capitalism but only to the benefit of the political comprador.