ZIMBABWE`S ROAD TO RECOVERY: Stanley Mauro Jensen
We will build a party of progress that always reflects the spirit of the Zimbabwean people. I say with emphasis that without the wise policies which we intend to bring into action during my tenure, no such progress would ever be possible under the current regime. The first responsibility of my Administration is to renew the march to progress from its collapse by the mismanagement, corruption, rape and torture. That task will involve the restoration of confidence in the future, the liberation and stimulation of the constructive energies of our people. There is not a person within the sound of my voice that does not know the profound progress which our country can achieve. Every man and woman knows; let it be known that Zimbabwean comfort, hope and confidence for the future will be immeasurably higher than they were three decades ago.
It is not my purpose to enter upon a detailed recital of the great destructive measures of the past years by which means they have been brought about. It is sufficient to remind you of the restoration of employment to the millions who walk our streets in idleness; to remind you of the enactment of adequate protective tariff and immigration laws which have safe-guarded our workers and farmers from floods of goods and labor from foreign countries; the creation of credit facilities and many other aids to agriculture; the building up of foreign trade; the development of radios, of our highways; the expansion of scientific research, of welfare activities, the making of safer highways, safer mines, better homes; the spread of outdoor recreation; the improvement in public health and the care of children; and a score of other progressive actions.
The new Government will deal with an economic and social system vastly more intricate and delicately adjusted than ever before. That system will and must be kept in perfect tune if we would maintain uninterrupted employment and the high standards of living of our people. The New Government will come to touch on this delicate web at a thousand points. Yearly the relations of the New Government to national prosperity will become more and more intimate. Only through keen vision and helpful cooperation by the Government will stability in business and stability in employment be maintained during my tenure in office. There will always be some localities, some industries and some individuals who do not share the prevailing prosperity. The task of Government will be to lessen these inequalities.
The New Government will dispense such aid and impulse to the progress of our people, not alone to economic progress but to the development of those agencies which make for moral and spiritual progress. However, in addition to this great contributions there will be a further fundamental contribution, a contribution underlying and sustaining all the others ,and that is the resistance of the Government to every and any attempt to inject the Government into business in competition with its citizens.
During the last 33 years, as a nation we have not been able to built up a form of self-government and a social system which is peculiarly our own, a Zimbabwean system, this will change when the new government assumes power. It will be definite and positive a political and social system, one which is yet to be developed on earth. It will be founded upon a particular conception of self-government in which decentralized local responsibility is the very base. Further than this, it will be founded upon the conception that only through ordered liberty, freedom and equal opportunity to the individual will his initiative and enterprise spur on the march of progress.
During the past 33 years we necessarily turned to the Government to solve every difficult economic problem. The Government having absorbed energy of our people for selfish reasons, there were no other solution. For self preservation of the ZANU PF became a centralized despotism which undertook unprecedented responsibilities, assumed autocratic powers, and took over the business of citizens. To a large degree we regimented our whole people temporarily into a socialistic state. However justified in times of madness, it should not continue in the New Zimbabwe, for it would destroy not only our Zimbabwean identity but with it our progress and freedom as well.
When the war was over in 1980 and until now, the most vital of all issues in our country is still whether the Government should continue their wartime ownership and operation of many instrumentalities of production and distribution. Russian doctrines of paternalism and state communism were preferred. The acceptance of these ideas resulted in the destruction of self-government through centralization of government. It also meant the undermining of the individual initiative and enterprise through which our people would have grown to unparalleled greatness.
When the New Government comes into power it will uphold the fundamental conception of the State, the rights and responsibilities of the individual. There it will restore confidence and hope in the Zimbabwean people, it will free and stimulate enterprise, and it will restore the Government to its position as an umpire instead of a player in the economic game. For these reasons the Zimbabwean people will go forward in progress while some countries have even gone backward. If anyone will study the causes of retarded recuperation in Africa, one will find much of it is due to the stifling of private initiative on one hand, and overloading of the Government with business on the other.
If agricultural relief program should mean anything, the Government shall directly or indirectly buy and sell and fix prices of agricultural products. And we are to go into the hydro-electric, solar and wind power business. In other words, we are confronted with a huge program of government in business.
There is, therefore, submitted to the Zimbabwean people a question of fundamental principle. That is, shall we depart from the principles of yester-years, where political and economic system, based on principles destructive of its very foundations? And I wish to emphasize the seriousness of these proposals. I wish to make my position clear; for this goes to the very roots of Zimbabwean life and progress. I should like to state the effect that this projection of government in business would have upon our system of self-government and our economic system. That effect would reach to the daily life of every man and woman. It would impair the very basis of liberty and freedom not only for those left outside the fold of expanded bureaucracy but for those embraced within it. When the Government undertakes to go into commercial business it must at once set up the organization and administration of that business, and it immediately finds itself in a labyrinth, every alley of which leads to the destruction of self-government. Commercial business requires a concentration of responsibility. Self-government requires decentralization and many checks and balances to safeguard liberty. Our Government to succeed in business would become in effect despotism.
The first problem of the Government about to adventure into commercial business is to determine a method of administration. It must secure leadership and direction. Shall this leadership be chosen by political agencies or shall we make it elective? The hard practical fact is that leadership in business must come through the sheer rise in ability and character. That rise can only take place in the free atmosphere of competition. Competition is closed by bureaucracy. Political agencies are feeble channels through which to select able leaders to conduct commercial business. Government, in order to avoid the possible incompetence, corruption and tyranny of too great authority in individuals entrusted with commercial business, inevitably turns to boards and commissions. To make sure that there are checks and balances, each member of such boards and commissions must have equal authority. Each has his separate responsibility to the public, and at once we have the conflict of ideas and the lack of decision which would ruin any commercial business. It has contributed greatly to the demoralization of our shopping business.
Moreover, these commissions must be representative of different sections and different political parties, so that at once we have an entire blight upon coordinated action within their ranks which destroys any possibility of effective administration. Moreover, our legislative bodies cannot in fact delegate their full authority to commissions or to individuals for the conduct of matters vital to the Zimbabwean people; for if we would preserve government by the people we must preserve the authority of our legislators in the activities of our Government. Thus every time the Government goes into a commercial business, Senators and parliamentarians become the actual board of directors of that business. Every time a State Government goes into business one or two hundred State Senators and legislators become the actual directors of that business. Even if they were supermen and if there were no politics in Zimbabwe, no body of such numbers could competently direct commercial activities; for that requires initiative, instant decision and action.
Moreover, these commissions must be representative of different sections and different political parties, so that at once we have an entire blight upon coordinated action within their ranks which destroys any possibility of effective administration. Moreover, our legislative bodies cannot in fact delegate their full authority to commissions or to individuals for the conduct of matters vital to the Zimbabwean people; for if we would preserve government by the people we must preserve the authority of our legislators in the activities of our Government. Thus every time the Government goes into a commercial business, Senators and parliamentarians become the actual board of directors of that business. Every time a State Government goes into business one or two hundred State Senators and legislators become the actual directors of that business. Even if they were supermen and if there were no politics in Zimbabwe, no body of such numbers could competently direct commercial activities; for that requires initiative, instant decision and action.
When the Government undertakes to go into business, the State is at once deprived of control and taxation of that business; when a State Government undertakes to go into business, it at once deprives the municipalities of taxation and control of that business. Municipalities, being local and close to the people, can, at times, succeed in business where State Governments fails. We have trouble enough with log rolling in legislative bodies today. It originates naturally from desires of citizens to advance their particular section or to secure some necessary service. It would be multiplied a thousand fold were the Government is in these businesses. The effect upon our economic progress would be even worse. Business progressiveness is dependent on competition. New methods and new ideas are the outgrowth of the spirit of adventure, or individual initiative and of individual enterprise. Without adventure there is no progress. No Government Administration can rightly take chances with taxpayers’ money.
There is no better example of the practical incompetence of Government to conduct business than the history of our NRZ, ZISCO, ZUPCO and others to name but a few. I believe there is no man to whom I would take second position in my loyalty to the Republic of the Zimbabwe, and yet I would not give it more power over the individual citizenship of our country. It is a question of whether it shall be Government ownership or private ownership. Let the future tell the story of who is right or who is wrong; who has stood for freedom and who has been willing to submit their fate industrially to the Government. The Government in commercial business does not tolerate among its customers the freedom of competitive reprisals to which private business is subject to. Bureaucracy does not tolerate the spirit of independence; it spreads the spirit of submission into our daily life and penetrates the temper of our people not with the habit of powerful resistance to wrong but with the habit of timid acceptance of irresistible might.
There is no better example of the practical incompetence of Government to conduct business than the history of our NRZ, ZISCO, ZUPCO and others to name but a few. I believe there is no man to whom I would take second position in my loyalty to the Republic of the Zimbabwe, and yet I would not give it more power over the individual citizenship of our country. It is a question of whether it shall be Government ownership or private ownership. Let the future tell the story of who is right or who is wrong; who has stood for freedom and who has been willing to submit their fate industrially to the Government. The Government in commercial business does not tolerate among its customers the freedom of competitive reprisals to which private business is subject to. Bureaucracy does not tolerate the spirit of independence; it spreads the spirit of submission into our daily life and penetrates the temper of our people not with the habit of powerful resistance to wrong but with the habit of timid acceptance of irresistible might.
Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power. You cannot extend the mastery of the Government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people’s souls and thoughts. Every expansion of Government in business means that Government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation’s press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die. It is a false liberalism that interprets itself into the Government operation of commercial business. Every step of bureaucratizing of the business of our country poisons the very roots of liberalism, that is, political equality, free speech, free assembly, free press and equality of opportunity. It is the road not to more liberty but to less liberty. Liberalism should be found not striving to spread bureaucracy but striving to set bounds to it. True liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom, first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain. That belief is the foundation of all possible Zimbabwean progress, political as well as economic.
Liberalism is a force truly of the spirit, a force proceeding from the deep realization that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved. Even if governmental conduct of business could give us more efficiency instead of less efficiency, the fundamental objection to it would remain unaltered and unabated. It would destroy political equality. It would increase rather than decrease abuse and corruption. It would stifle initiative and invention. It would undermine the development of leadership. It would cramp and cripple the mental and spiritual energies of our people. It would extinguish equality and opportunity. It would dry up the spirit of liberty and progress. For these reasons primarily it must be resisted.
I do not wish to be misunderstood in this statement. I am defining a general policy. It does not mean that our Government is to be part with one iota of its national resources without complete protection to the public interest. I have already stated that where the Government is engaged in public works for purposes of flood control, of navigation, of irrigation, of scientific research or national defense, or in pioneering a new art, it will at times necessarily produce power or commodities as a by-product. But they must be a by-product of the major purpose, not the major purpose itself.
I do not wish to be misinterpreted as believing that Zimbabwe is free-for-all and devil-take-the-hindmost. The very essence of equality of opportunity and of Zimbabwean individualism is that there shall be no domination by any group or combination in this Republic, whether be it business or political. On the contrary, it demands economic justice as well as political and social justice. It is no system of laissez faire.
Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion for Zimbabwe, to be pursued only but never attained. Until bigotry and prejudice and Mugabe`s malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good-will in Zimbabwe. Until all Zimbabweans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; I shall not rest or silenced.
I have witnessed not only at home but abroad the many failures of Government in business. I have seen its tyrannies, its injustices, its destructions of self-government, it’s undermining of the very instincts which carry our people forward to progress. I have witness the lack of advance, the lowered standards of living, and the depressed spirits of people working under such a system. My objection is based not upon theory or upon a failure to recognize wrong or abuse, but I know the adoption of such methods would strike at the very roots of Zimbabwean life and would destroy the very basis of Zimbabwean progress.
Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion for Zimbabwe, to be pursued only but never attained. Until bigotry and prejudice and Mugabe`s malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good-will in Zimbabwe. Until all Zimbabweans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; I shall not rest or silenced.
I have witnessed not only at home but abroad the many failures of Government in business. I have seen its tyrannies, its injustices, its destructions of self-government, it’s undermining of the very instincts which carry our people forward to progress. I have witness the lack of advance, the lowered standards of living, and the depressed spirits of people working under such a system. My objection is based not upon theory or upon a failure to recognize wrong or abuse, but I know the adoption of such methods would strike at the very roots of Zimbabwean life and would destroy the very basis of Zimbabwean progress.
As to our great manufacturing and distributing industries, the New Government will insist upon the enactment of laws that not only would maintain competition but would destroy conspiracies to destroy the smaller units or dominate and limit the equality of opportunity among our people.
One of the great problems of government is to determine to what extent the Government shall regulate and control commerce and industry and how much it shall leave it alone. No system is perfect. We have had many abuses in the private conduct of business. That every good citizen resents. It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business. Nor am I setting up the contention that our institutions are perfect. No human ideal is ever perfectly attained, since humanity itself is not perfect.Our country can become the land of opportunity to those born without inheritance, not merely because of the wealth of its resources and industry, but because of this freedom of initiative and enterprise. By adherence to the principles of decentralized self-government, ordered liberty, equal opportunity and freedom to the individual our Zimbabwe experiment in human welfare can yield a degree of well-being unparalleled in the entire world. It can come nearer to the abolition of poverty, to the abolition of fear of want, than humanity has ever reached before.
As a nation we came out of Gukurahundi, Operation Murambatsvina, Land Grab and hyper-inflation with great losses. We are poorer as a nation when we emerged from these. Yet when the New Government assumes office as a nation we will recover from these losses and increase our national income by over one-third, even if we discount inflation. I know of no better test of improved conditions of the average family than the combined increase in assets of life and industrial insurance, building and loan associations, and savings deposits. These are the savings banks of the average man. These agencies alone will in seven years be increased by nearly 100 per cent to the gigantic sum of over fifty billions of dollars, or nearly one-sixth of our whole national wealth. There will be increase in home ownership; we will expand the investments of the average man.
In addition to these evidences of larger savings, our people will steadily increase their spending for higher standards of living. The slogan of progress will change from the full dinner pail to the full garage. Our people will have more to eat, better things to wear and better homes. There will be a job to every man and woman that will be more secure. We will in this short period decrease the fear of unemployment, the fear of old age; and these are fears that are the greatest calamities of human kind.
We will steadily reduce the sweat in human labour. Our hours of labour will be lessened; our leisure will be increased. We will expand our parks and playgrounds. We will pour into outdoor recreation in every direction. The visitors at our national parks will be trebled and we will have so increased the number of sportsmen fishing in our streams and lakes that the longer time between bites will become a political issue. The radio will bring music and laughter, education and political discussion to almost every fireside. Springing from our prosperity with its greater freedom, its vast endowment of scientific research and the greater resources with which to care for public health, we will in accordance to our insurance actuaries in a short period, lengthen the average span of life by nearly eight years. We will reduce infant mortality; we will vastly decrease the days of illness and suffering in the life of every man and woman. We will improve the facilities for the care of the crippled and helpless and deranged.
From our increasing resources we will expanded our educational system in eight years. The education of our youth will become almost our largest and certainly our most important activity. From our greater income and thus our ability to free youth from toil we will increase the attendance in our grade schools by 20 per cent, in our high schools by 85 per cent, and in our institutions of higher learning by 90 per cent. We will have more youth in these institutions of higher learning twice over than before. We will make notable progress in literature, in art and in public taste. We will make progress in the leadership of every branch of Zimbabwean life. Never in our history will the leadership in our economic life be more distinguished in its abilities than it will be, and it will grow greatly in its consciousness of public responsibility. Leadership in our professions and in moral and spiritual affairs of our country will be of a higher order. And our magnificent educational system will bring forward a host of recruits for the succession of national leadership.
Cities and rural Areas alike will become beneficiary of this great progress and of these safeguarded principles. Here we will have made abundant opportunity not only for the youth of the land but for general public. Cities and Rural Areas alike should be the commercial centres of Zimbabwe. They are the commercial agent of the Zimbabwean people. They will be great organisms of specialized skill and leadership in finance, industry and commerce, which reaches every spot in our country. Their progress and beauty are the pride of the whole Zimbabwean people. It will lead our nation in its benevolences to charity, to education and scientific research. They will be the centre of art, music, literature and drama. To the agricultural industry we shall need to advance initial capital to assist them to stabilize their industry. But this proposal implies that they shall conduct it themselves, and not by the Government. It is in the interest of our cities that we shall bring agriculture and all industries into full stability and prosperity.
Cities and rural Areas alike will become beneficiary of this great progress and of these safeguarded principles. Here we will have made abundant opportunity not only for the youth of the land but for general public. Cities and Rural Areas alike should be the commercial centres of Zimbabwe. They are the commercial agent of the Zimbabwean people. They will be great organisms of specialized skill and leadership in finance, industry and commerce, which reaches every spot in our country. Their progress and beauty are the pride of the whole Zimbabwean people. It will lead our nation in its benevolences to charity, to education and scientific research. They will be the centre of art, music, literature and drama. To the agricultural industry we shall need to advance initial capital to assist them to stabilize their industry. But this proposal implies that they shall conduct it themselves, and not by the Government. It is in the interest of our cities that we shall bring agriculture and all industries into full stability and prosperity.
In bringing this statement to a conclusion, I would like to restate some of the fundamental things; I have endeavored to bring out. The foundations of progress and prosperity are dependent as ever before upon the wise policies of government, for government now touches at a thousand points the intricate web of economic and social life. Prosperity is no idle expression. It is a job for every worker; it is the safety and the safeguard of every business and every home. I have dwelt at some length on the principles of relationship between the Government and business. I make no apologies for dealing with this subject. The first necessity of any nation is the smooth functioning of the vast business machinery for employment, feeding, clothing, housing and providing luxuries and comfort to a people. Unless these basic elements are properly organized and function, there can be no progress in business, in education, literature, music or art. There can be no advance in the fundamental ideals of a people. A people cannot make progress in poverty.
I have endeavored to present to you that the greatness of Zimbabwe will come out of a political and social system and a method of control of economic forces distinctly its own our Zimbabwean system which will carry this great experiment in human welfare further than ever before in our history. We will come closer to the ideal of the abolition of poverty and fear from the lives of men and women than ever before in any land. And I again repeat that the departure from our Zimbabwean system by injecting principles destructive to it which our opponents propose will jeopardize the very liberty and freedom of our people, will destroy equality of opportunity, not alone to ourselves but to our children.
To me the foundation of Zimbabwean life rests upon the home and the family. I read into these great economic forces, these intricate and delicate relations of the Government with business and with our political and social life, but one supreme end that, we will reinforce the ties that bind together the millions of our families, that we strengthen the security, the happiness and the independence of every home.
My conception of Zimbabwe is a land where men and women may walk in ordered freedom in the independent conduct of their occupations; where they may enjoy the advantages of wealth, not concentrated in the hands of the few but spread through the lives of all, where they build and safeguard their homes and give to their children the fullest advantages and opportunities of the Zimbabwean life; where every man shall be respected in the faith that his conscience and his heart direct him to follow; where a contented and happy people, secure in their liberties, free from poverty and fear, shall have the leisure and impulse to seek a fuller life.
This all leads to a release of the energies of men and women from the dull hardships of life to a wider vision and a higher hope. It leads to the opportunity for greater and greater service, not alone from man to man in our own land, but from our country to the whole Africa. It leads to a Zimbabwe, healthy in body, healthy in spirit, unfettered, youthful, eager, with a vision searching beyond the furthest horizons, with an open mind sympathetic and generous. It is to those higher ideals and for these purposes that I pledge myself.
Tatenda!
Thank you.
Stanley Mauro Jensen
Thank you.
Stanley Mauro Jensen
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