Tendai Biti Finance Minister
When he was sworn in as Minister of Finance Hon Biti made it clear that he was under no illusion whatsoever about the task ahead and would give as much as he takes from his detractors in the party of geriatrics-Zanu PF.
The loathed Professor Jonathan Moyo whose penchant for publicity needs no explanation to any reasonable Zimbabwean was first to denounce the appointment and predict that the Minister would perform at the dismal levels set by failed predecessors Enos Nkala and Dr Samuel Mumbengegwi.
But then Professor Moyo is reputed for making outrageous predictions that hardly ever materialise because- anemuromo usingamharwe nenhunzi –for lack of a better English idiom to explain his intrusive communication style. Minister Biti had the easiest of tasks confounding the Professor’s predictions when first he tamed the runaway hyperinflation economic environment and its underwriter Dr Gideon Gono. Within two weeks of taking up office Biti managed to mobilise adequate funding to pay Civil Servants in Foreign currency and has not only maintained the initial allowance of US$100 per month for each Civil Servant but also prudently gave government timely advice to convert the allowances into salaries and increase the take home pay levels by 28% at the lower end and 100% on average.Civil Servants who hitherto were earning worthless trillions of Zimbabwe dollars per month suddenly found themselves capable of walking into fully stocked supermarkets and retail outlets and purchase most of the basic necessities from their incomes and still remain with enough for bus fares and even luxuries like beer and cigarettes. To state that products had become scarce and unaffordable is to understate the economic desperation in 2008 Zimbabwe. The only commodity in plentiful supply was the worthless currency and everything else was subject to racketeering.
Not that the new salaries they were and are getting from the coalition government were and are adequate compensation for their efforts, hell no, but the workers in general were and are still better off with the lowly salaries they are getting now than they were with the bountiful Zimbabwe dollars they were being paid prior to the formation of the coalition government. More importantly the economic stabilisation brought about by Minister Biti’s unwavering commitment to tame inflation has meant that prices of goods and services have been stabilised and consumers are able to budget for their needs with a degree of accuracy and certainty hitherto unimaginable during the hyperinflation era of the fraudulent Zanu PF regime dubbed the War Cabinet by President Mugabe.
The provision of consumer products and the current availability albeit of mostly imported products that the nation now takes for granted caused Mugabe and his incompetent regime to wage a full scale Price War where every available and able bodied military operative was mobilised to force down prices in vain. Not only did the prices continue to shoot through the roofs but the goods and services also disappeared in the underworld of the black market and the Zanu PF regime that had all along pretended to be immune to the country’s self imposed economic isolation – severing of economic ties with the Commonwealth, EU and USA for political expediency, was forced to not only admit that its alternative Look East policies had failed to placate the economic vacuum but also to escalate the economic agenda to the top of its political survival strategies disguised as the SANCTIONS removal initiative.
The problem though is that the segment of the electorate that was supposed to be most vulnerable to the sanctions mantra – business and workers – were not ignorant of what was causing them economic hardship- misrule, selective application of laws, human rights violations, corruption, kneejerk political initiatives, unwarranted political aggression dubbed patriotism, government unaccountability and political diversity intolerance. As a consequence the rural electorate that Zanu PF had relied on to push through unpopular and unworkable economic policies found themselves more dependent on the working class many of whom had sought refuge in foreign countries and were capable of more direct influence on their extended family network who could no longer depend on a bankrupt government for mitigation against threatening poverty, hunger and starvation.
The economic stabilisation is undoubtedly the most successful of all the coalition government initiatives and Minister Biti is a central player. Even Professor Moyo who predicted the Minister’s failure has been forced to indirectly admit to the success by attempting to apportion credit for the economic stabilisation initiative to the former Zanu PF acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa claiming it was his multi-currency use fiscal intervention that has stabilised the economy without explaining why Zanu PF had not implemented the idea prior to its being forced to go into a coalition government.
Be that as it may the electorate knows better that Chinamasa’s proposal was for payment of Civil Servants in non-redeemable printed foreign currency denominated vouchers ie replacing printed Zimbabwe dollar bearer cheques with printed foreign currency denominated vouchers to reduce the volume and quantity of money that consumers were burdened to carry when going shopping while ensuring they never laid their hands on real foreign currency in cash as it was the preserve of the Zanu PF elite with privileged access to the Reserve Bank. It was never the intention to pay workers in the foreign currencies but to supplement their Zimbabwe dollar earnings with a US$ 100.00 stipend which they could only claim in nominal terms as per the voucher but could not receive in cash not least of all claim as basic pensionable emoluments from their employment.
It is early days yet for Zanu PF spin doctors to try and pretend that President Mugabe who was central to denying them fair remuneration over the past decades by remaining fixed to voodoo economic practices has in two short years transformed into a champion of worker rights to earn real money as opposed to phoney printed money to pacify them. The reality of the matter is that Zanu PF is not sincere about Civil Service wage level improvements but is trying to project a caring attitude for political expediency. President Mugabe once claimed at a rally in Masvingo that Zanu PF deserved support because it had made blacks millionaires. The same insincerity transcends the current push to increase public servants incomes beyond the capacity of the government to fund them and will trigger the dreaded inflation that had been brought under control thanks to the transparency of the Finance Minister.
When the same Minister managed to pay Civil Servants the promised US$100.00 stipend in cash within 2 weeks of assuming office and went on to mobilise enough funds to convert the stipends into pensionable emoluments and increase them, it was Zanu PF that was always at the forefront of resisting the initiative and accusing MDC of creating parallel government structures in the Prime Minister’s office to ingratiate the party with Civil Servants. Now that the public servants are slightly better off it is the same Zanu PF that wants to rock the stabilised boat by purporting to be pro increased worker salaries even when the same party cannot guarantee sustainable funding of the salaries bill from current government revenue earning capacity.
It is this kind of economic brinkmanship that drove Zimbabwe to the 2008 precipice and there is no tangible plan in place that guarantees that if supported the ill premised economic management will not re-ignite the inflation spiral. Increasing Civil Servants salaries is not in itself a bad economic decision but increasing the same salaries without a healthy revenue base to sustain them is unreasonable and suicidal economic management no reasonable person can be expected to support.
Awarding unsupported salary increments can only project President Mugabe and his Zanu PF party as short term political winners but in the medium to long term it will boomerang. While fair and equitable remuneration is an earned right entrenched in the Zimbabwe Constitution and its Labour Laws and must be vigorously defended by all the workers and their beneficiaries alike, we must never lose sight of the fact that compensation fairness is not rooted in attendance to the workplace but rather in national productivity. The problem is that in Zimbabwe Labour laws compel entrepreneurs to pay fair wages for workplace attendance by contracted workers and not for worker productivity. This is untenable in a country whose economy is struggling to recover from years of plunder and pillaging by an arrogant regime that believes it is owed payment for prosecuting a war of Liberation from colonists that ended some 31 years ago.
The first point of attack is not the Minister of Finance who has been tasked to look after a bankrupt national treasury but rather the accountability side of the wealth supply process. Every grain of farm produce, ounce of mineral produce, thread of fabric, dime of tourism income and all revenue earning endeavour must be accounted for to the national treasury through a new employer/worker cooperative paradigm that has zero tolerance on corruption and underhand dealings.
In a country where production is below 50% of capacity and productivity is severely curtailed by erratic energy and raw material supplies as well as obsolete production technologies coupled with a work ethic that entitles workers to remuneration for such unavoidable downtime as if the workers had turned out a performance worthy remuneration the expectation of a competitive fair wage is to say the least unreasonable if the fairness is in comparison to regional and international averages.
Even at the micro level the expectation of a fair wage that does not take account of lost production times and shrinkage through corruption and unaccountable conduct is equally unreasonable.
Trade Unions and Workers need to bargain for this and get the country moving forward. First workers must accept that lost production time reduces employer capacities to generate enough revenues to finance operational costs and wages are part of those costs. Downtime due to causes beyond the employers’ control such as electricity and water outages must become the employer employee responsibility to make up for either as a deduction on leave or by workers agreeing to work equivalent extra hours when the outages are restored. Add to these unchecked leakages through overstaffing to patronise preferred constituents and the recipe for disaster is complete.
Paradoxically the siphoning of precious minerals, underhand trade practices and shameless looting of working capital and assets by people in organisational leadership positions is almost always facilitated by the very workers who eventually lead militant wage demands against institutions in which they are employed. The militancy could be avoided if the same employees proactively act against the malpractices rather than react to them.
This is why Minister Biti deserves a pat on the back for standing firm about salary increments for Civil Servants. For the record Minister Biti’s remit in Government is not to blindly implement Executive Directives (Cabinet Decisions) but rather to account for government income and expenditure and advise the Executive of the correct financial position of the fiscus and the consequences of government overspending or appropriate financing plans for government expenditure. He is not the Civil Servant’s paymaster but rather their Accountant. Responsibility for payment of the Civil Service lies with the Minister of the Public Service and is done through the Public Service Commission.
Given the same function successive Zanu PF appointees and the successive RBZ governors connived with the Cabinet to overspend the country’s revenues. The result was rapid depletion of capital reserves, unserviceable national debts and the eventual printing of money to patronise workers and cover up for the yawning gap between national income and expenditure. Inflation refused to be cheated and mutated into ravaging hyperinflation the consequences of which nobody needs reminding.
Increased wages alone do not necessarily cause inflation but if wage increases are disproportionate to productivity they increase demand for goods and services and price adjustments will be used to moderate the excess of demand over the supply until a point of equilibrium is reached-ceteris paribus. But all factors affecting the supply demand relationship can never be held constant for the salaries and wages impact to be precisely measured hence the holistic approach usually employed when determining whether or not to increase wages.
There is more that is commendable about Minister Biti’s resolute stance than just his ability to articulate the government advisory role he has been entrusted with in the volatile Zimbabwe coalition government. While the constitution guarantees fair compensation for all workers in Zimbabwe, subsidiary legislation from the same Constitution specifies how fair and equitable compensation for workers will be derived. In particular Labour Act [Chapter 28:01] clearly stipulates that fair compensation and conditions of service will be out of the process of Collective Bargaining between Trade Unions, and Workers Unions (Employment Councils) at National Level or Workers Committees and Employers (Works Councils) at plant level. When registered, CBAs become legal instruments enforceable at law through the Labour Court. Nowhere in that Act does it say salaries and wages or conditions of service will be negotiated between the Minister and the War Veterans or Zanu PF Supporters.
Minister Biti is fully aware of these laws and has thus far rightly avoided availing himself to discuss employment matters outside his remit with political constituencies that have no right whatsoever to negotiate on behalf of workers.
Why the political merchants of death are targeting Minister Biti instead of Ministers Mukonoweshuro and or Mpariwa is because Zanu PF is pursuing a political agenda to cause the premature foreclosure of the coalition government. Minister Biti must remain resolute about never giving the misguided Zanu PF supporters an audience over salaries and wages. Secondly Premier Tsvangirai must render him support by raising the issue of the Mister’s office invasion by Zanu PF supporters under Police escort in Cabinet and seek for the arrest of the ZRP Commanders who authorised the illegal invasion in the next Cabinet meeting.
The culture of invasion that started with the Dr Hunzvi led invasion of the Courts and engulfed commercial farms is now at the doorstep of MDC Ministered portfolios in the inclusive government. The ZRP is now happy to marshal these illegal invasions of government offices because the culture of invasions has been ingrained and legalized through Executive, Parliamentary and Judiciary acquiescence.
The adage Kamoto kamberevere kanopisa matanda mberi ( a spark can light up a ravaging and uncontrollable veldt fire) is apt here. While President Mugabe watches with glee as his party supporters harass the Finance Minister he must never rule out the possibility that if the invasion succeeds it may embolden his political opponents to use similar tactics to push him out of office and the Police will stand by and watch in like manner to what they are doing as the drama against Minister Biti unfolds. Believing that he has unwavering support of the military is an ill advised belief as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt soon found out when his orders for the military to suppress civilian insurrection failed and he was instead deposed and is now faced with a litany of legal suits.
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