What does it mean to be Zimbabwean? It’s a debate we need to have, says Tendai Biti
Finance Minister on trust, fear, justice and identity
“We need a common set of values to define what it means to be Zimbabwean”
Zimbabwe’s new Constitution, passed overwhelmingly in a March referendum and expected to be adopted next week, will re-establish a “social contract,” the trust that is essential to effective functioning of modern economies, according to the Finance Minister, Tendai Biti.
Societies can only function if the people trust their government, he said. Trust comes with the checks and balances on government power that constitutionalism proves. Yet, he said, Zimbabwe lacks a national debate on issues that address trust, fear and the country’s path to the future.
Speaking at the London think tank Chatham House recently, he said the lack of debate on transitional justice was a “fatal omission”.
“When I became finance minister, one of the key things that people always used to ask me was ‘Are you going to return the Zimbabwean dollar?’ Because that was such a measure of trust — can we trust you, are you going to return the Zimbabwean dollar. I had to say that if someone was to force me to return the Zimbabwean dollar, then I would rather commit suicide that do something stupid like that. But the issue was trust,” he said.
“The Constitution is an important step in restoring the social contract. But the Constitution alone is not enough — we need constitutionalism. We need law and order, courts that work. This is the debate that ought to be taking place but is not.”
Nor were people’s fears being addressed, Mr Biti said, naming transitional justice, land reform and compensation, security of wealth, inclusion and politically-motivated violence.
“When you have got societies in transition, for that transition not to be prolonged, you need dialogue to address people’s fears. There is an absent debate in Zimbabwe right now, which is the debate on addressing people’s fears.
“What are peoples fears? I want to address the ZANU-PF. If I was the ZANU-PF I would be worried about transitional justice, I would be worried about the international courts, the International Criminal Court & the Rome Treaty. Nowadays you don’t even have to subscribe to the Rome Treaty for the international law to apply. We all know that. I would want guarantees, if I was ZANU-PF, that the trial status of the Charles Taylors of this world does not apply to me.
“Zimbabwe is not having a debate about transitional justice — that is a fatal omission.
“The second issue that I’d want addressed if I was ZANU-PF would be the issue of land reform — is it permanent? Fortunately, that has been resolved by the Constitution — we have made the land reform permanent.”
Compensation has become a contentious issue, he said. “But it’s not a constitutional issue, its a budget issue,” he said. “We have been paying compensation to farmers, if you look at our budget, since 2000.”
On the issue of fraudulently acquired wealth, he said this was also an issue of transitional justice. “Our Constitution protects private property unambiguously, in Part Four of the Bill of Rights provision.”
Inclusion, like land reform and compensation, needed to be publicly aired if ZImbabweans were to overcome the age-old revolutionary practice of tainting those associated with the “old order,” he said.
“There must be debate on inclusion, on participation, on the democratisation of the economy. A large sector of our people did not participate in the land reform. They are Zimbabweans, they are saying they want to participate. One of the beautiful things of our Constitution is that we democratised that, we de-racialised that. So it doesn’t matter if you are red, green or blue or white, you can own land in Zimbabwe.”
For followers of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)– of which Mr Biti is secretary general and which entered into a power-sharing arrangement with the ZANU-PF of President Robert Mugabe after contentious elections in 2008 — should be concerned about violence such as that which marred the last poll, he said.
“Why should violence be an instrument of political mediation? So let’s have a discussion that violence in our society can never be an instrument of political mediation,” he said. “People want the rule of law.”
The economy also needed to be de-politicised, he said, to ensure that it functioned and grew smoothly.
“Politicising the economy, making irrational, political statements that affect the economy, or political statements for expedience — you can differ, you can have so many political parties, but there are certain fundamentals which we have learned — the economy must function. The government can do its own social programmes, but a functional economy must exist. This is the lesson that Africa has learnt since 2000. Let’s have a proper agreement on the vision of what is our economy. A debate must take place on that,” Mr Biti said.
To add cohesion to this vision for the country’s future, Zimbabweans needed to define themselves through a common set of values, he said, as the United States had done with the Declaration of Independence.
“When Jefferson and others wrote that ‘we take it as self evident that all men are born equal’, they were defining and capturing a common set of values amongst everyone, the republicanists, the colonialists, of what it is to be American.
“Zimbabwe, and Africans, need this debate. What does it actually mean to be a Zimbabwean? What does it actually mean to be a South African?
“I spent time in exile in South Africa in 2008. I knew I was going to get arrested if I got back home but I chose to rot in a Zimbabwean prison rather than stay in that society with its contradictions. And one of the reasons that these contradiction are there — whether it is Zimbabwe, South Africa, whether it is Somalia, Cote d’Ivoir, is that we have not sought to define a fabric of what it means to be an African, what it means to be a Somalian, what it means to be a Zimbabwean.”
Source: ZimbabweElection.com
