Zim News Blog -NEWS NETWORK

Politicians and state economists love to chant economic indicators as if they are magical incantations capable of conjuring prosperity out of thin air.

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For years now, Zimbabweans have been fed a steady diet of a singular, glittering promise: the attainment of an “upper middle-income economy by 2030.”

With only four years left before this supposed economic promised land is reached, it is time for a cold, hard dose of reality.

We must look across the Limpopo River to understand exactly why this classification is a dangerous illusion that will do absolutely nothing to rescue the ordinary Zimbabwean from the clutches of grinding poverty.

South Africa stands as a towering, tragic monument to the deception of economic classifications.

It is officially classified as an upper middle-income economy, boasting one of the largest gross domestic products on the continent at over $427 billion.

Yet, beneath this glossy statistical veneer lies a humanitarian disaster.

South Africa is the most unequal society on earth, carrying a Gini coefficient of approximately 0.63.

Its middle-income status has not stopped a catastrophic official unemployment rate of 32.7%—which swells to a staggering 43.7% when including discouraged work seekers—from leaving almost one in two working-age citizens excluded from the formal economy.

Youth unemployment remains trapped between 45% and 60%.

Instead of prosperity, this structural inequality has bred deep-seated frustration, despair, and a toxic, rising tide of Afrophobic and anti-migrant sentiment.

The South African reality proves a fundamental truth that our leaders desperately want us to ignore: a country can be incredibly wealthy on paper while its people starve in the streets.

If a massive economic powerhouse like South Africa cannot translate its upper middle-income status into a decent life for its ordinary citizens, what makes Zimbabweans believe a similar paper classification will perform miracles here?

The mathematics of our current reality make the 2030 promise not just improbable, but insulting.

Today, nearly half of our population lives in extreme poverty, over 60 percent struggle under general poverty, and at least 85 percent exist under what is classified as upper-middle poverty.

Over 90 percent of our people are out of formal employment, forced to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence on street corners.

To suggest that in a mere forty-eight months, these millions of impoverished souls will suddenly be hoisted into comfortable prosperity by a change in a treasury spreadsheet is a fantasy of the highest order.

The core of the problem is that gross domestic product and gross national income are aggregate figures.

They measure the total wealth generated within a country’s borders, but they say absolutely nothing about who actually owns that wealth.

It really does not matter what impressive figures the finance ministry writes in its budget books, nor does it matter if our economic growth rate looks beautiful on a slide presentation.

As long as the structural architecture of our economy remains unchanged, any new wealth generated will continue to flow directly into the pockets of a well-connected minority.

We cannot talk about economic growth without confronting the staggering inequality that defines modern Zimbabwe.

We must begin to ask the uncomfortable, hard-hitting questions that the elite would prefer we keep silent about.

How does a single individual in a supposedly struggling economy become so obscenely wealthy that they can throw around millions of dollars like pocket change?

How do we justify a reality where a select few can purchase private jets, build sprawling mansions, and hand out luxury vehicles and cash like confetti, while millions of their fellow citizens struggle to put a single plate of sadza on the table or find the money to send their children to basic primary school?

This is not wealth built on industrial innovation or genuine economic productivity; it is the product of a rigged system where public resources are privatized by a cartel of the elite.

When the state’s riches—our gold, our diamonds, our lithium, and our tax revenues—are funneled into the hands of a predatory minority, the national GDP might rise, but the citizen’s standard of living collapses.

This concentration of wealth at the top does not trickle down; it solidifies at the peak, leaving the rest of the nation to fight over the crumbs of a failing state.

Zimbabwe is rapidly cementing itself as another deeply unequal society where economic growth and human development have parted ways.

Even if we miraculously hit every single statistical target required to be officially designated an upper middle-income economy by 2030, nothing will change for the grandmother in Epworth, the vendor in Bulawayo, or the peasant farmer in Gokwe.

Ten years from now, the poor will remain trapped in the same grinding cycle of survival, while the elite continue to flaunt their unearned riches.

We must refuse to be pacified by political slogans and superficial economic labels.

An economy is only as healthy as its most vulnerable citizen.

As long as we fail to address the systemic corruption and deep structural inequality that loots the national purse for personal aggrandizement, the dream of 2030 will remain just that—a cruel, glittering mirage designed to keep the impoverished quiet while the wealthy continue their feast.

Our liberation lies not in achieving a meaningless bureaucratic classification, but in demanding an economy that values human dignity over deceptive statistics.

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There is a disturbing, almost theatrical absurdity to the modern Zimbabwean political economy.

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Nowhere is it more visible than in the grand auditoriums of the Harare International Conference Centre (HICC).

The news that President Emmerson Mnangagwa officially opened the inaugural National Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and Cooperatives Indaba is presented with the usual dry, bureaucratic optimism.

We are told of “enabling ecosystems,” “strategic networking,” and “value chain integration”.

Yet, beneath the corporate jargon lies a deeply cynical, beautifully choreographed illusion.

​The state’s strategy has once again succeeded in its primary objective.

It gathers the country’s most economically battered citizens into a five-star luxury complex and treats them to catered meals.

For a brief moment, they are made to feel like captains of industry.

Then, they are sent right back to the reality of hand-to-mouth survival.

The HICC, with its towering gold-and-purple architecture, its plush carpets, and its air-conditioned bubble, is the perfect stage for this performance.

For two days, the informal traders, the vegetable vendors, the backyard carpenters, and the communal farmers are rebranded.

No longer are they the “informal sector”—a term that carries the inconvenient stench of state failure and a lack of formal jobs.

Inside these walls, they are “MSMEs” and “cooperative partners”.

They are handed glossy lanyards, colorful badges, and folder packs.

They sit in the same cushioned seats once occupied by visiting heads of state, international financiers, and the ruling elite.

The psychological bait is brilliant.

It whispers to the struggling citizen that they are part of the system, that their struggle is a recognized “enterprise,” and that they are only a policy document away from joining the ranks of the wealthy.

But this is a cruel trick of perspective.

The five-star hotel setting is designed to mask the five-star policy failures of the ruling regime.

The state hosts these lavish gatherings to project an image of a paternal, caring government fostering grassroots capitalism.

But the very existence of such a massive, sprawling informal sector is not a sign of economic dynamism; it is a monument to a dead formal economy.

People do not trade by the roadside because they harbor a burning passion for micro-enterprise; they do it because the factories have closed, the currency has repeatedly imploded, and formal employment is a relic of the past.

As the President delivers his speech from the high altar of the podium, promising financial inclusion and digital transformation, the contrast with reality is stark.

The delegates applaud, momentarily intoxicated by the grandeur of the room and the proximity to power.

Yet, when the conference ends and the banners are taken down, these “entrepreneurs” must walk out of the pristine gates of the hotel and back into the real Zimbabwe.

They return to a world where the municipal police will chase them from the streets for trading without a permit.

They return to marketplaces without clean water, electricity, or basic sanitation.

They go back to the grueling, daily struggle of hand-to-mouth survival on the margins of the streets.

​They go back to a system that offers absolutely no genuine, structural support to help them scale their informal trading into actual, sustainable businesses.

The heavily promoted digital payment solutions mean very little in a market where daily survival still depends on the physically scarce US dollar bills folded tightly in their pockets.

The Indaba is essentially an exercise in pacification through prestige.

By inviting the impoverished into the palace of the elite, the state temporarily defuses the anger of the marginalized.

It transforms the systemic grievances of the working class into individual aspirations.

The message is clear: do not protest the complete lack of formal jobs or the absence of genuine economic opportunities.

Instead, work harder on your “project”, register your micro-business, and you too might one day sit in the HICC as a VIP.

This is the tragedy of Zimbabwe’s economic discourse.

It has normalized poverty by giving it a corporate makeover.

It treats the desperate scramble for survival as a celebrated lifestyle choice.

When the state gets impoverished Zimbabweans into a five-star hotel to make them feel rich, it is not offering a path to prosperity.

It is offering a temporary anesthetic.

A fleeting, air-conditioned dream designed to keep the poor quiet, compliant, and hopeful just long enough for the motorcades to drive away.

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He showed them his papers confirming he had been granted refugee status and was here legally. This didn’t mean much to the  inquisitors. When they had finished with him, he was lying in a pool of blood, gasping for breath. His life was only saved after an hours-long operation at the nearby Tygerberg Hospital. No- one has been arrested for the attempted murder.

Meanwhile, videos of marauding vigilantes going from door-to-door in the townships to sniff out foreign blacks have gone viral. AI has not helped the situation as it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between reality and fake AI-generated content.

The leaders of these angry, rag-tag vigilante impis trek across South Africa in luxury SUV vehicles imploring their knobkierie and whip-carrying followers to rid the country of non-South African blacks, who they accuse of committing most of the serious crimes like murder and drug-dealing. Worst of all, they accuse them of taking their jobs.

Officially, the vigilantes say they want to rid South Africa of illegal immigrants, of which there are many. The reality on the streets is if one has a foreign accent, it’s a criminal offence. The distinction between legal and illegal immigration becomes an inconvenient detail and mob justice is usually meted out on the hapless foreigner.

Understandably, several African governments have been vocal in condemning what they see as Afrophobia while some of their citizens demand that they retaliate.

This week, the South African minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Mmamoloko Kubayi, sat down with a group of Johannesburg-based foreign correspondents to explain her government’s position.

She made it very clear that the South African government was not “chasing anyone from this country.”

“Those with papers have nothing to worry about,” she said.

She accepted that her government could have done more to control illegal immigration.

“The management of our borders was not done properly. This has led to slow economic growth,” she said.

Many farms and restaurants in the country employ foreigners whom they exploit “because they are vulnerable,” she declared.

Kubayi  felt it was desirable for South Africans to have a national dialogue on the question of foreign migration.

“We need to educate our people that we do need people from other countries but we have to enforce the law. We are trying to create an environment for legal migration,” she said, adding that South Africa was not the only country grappling with illegal migration and pointing to Europe and the US as examples.

When pressed about the vigilantes who seem to have a free rein, Kubayi pointed out that three of their leaders had been arrested for incitement to violence against foreigners.

“There is prospect of success in these cases,” she said.

The Minister was at pains to explain that there was “ no humanitarian crisis” in the country despite thousands of frightened foreign blacks camping outside their countries’ embassies in appalling conditions.

She pointed out the newly-built tent city just outside Musina as an example of her government’s commitment to safe housing for the displaced people while officials process their papers for repatriation.

“We have a 24-hour clinic. UNICEF is there taking care of the welfare of the children.  A number of  NGOs are also there helping with feeding,” she said.

The number of people arriving at the Zimbabwe border for repatriation was declining by day.

“Two days ago we had 1147. Last night we had 707,” said Kubayi.

Asked about compensation for those who had lost their property in the violence, the minister was adamant; no one would be compensated.

“There will be no compensation at all. People and companies who lost their properties in 2021 in the Durban riots were not compensated. The law does not allow it,” she said.

The Director-General of Home Affairs, Livhuwani Makhode, who accompanied the minister, emphasised that only law enforcement agents were allowed to check people’s documents.

He announced that the Border Management agency had processed 67 000 repatriates through all South Africa’s borders. The Zimbabwe government has said about 100 000 of its citizens had returned home.

Asked about the discrepancy, Makhode said most of the Zimbabweans were voluntary returnees and had been processed in the normal way.

Of the thousands assisted by Home Affairs, he said 53 000 had no passports.

“We worked with their embassies to get them travel documents before they could leave the country,” he said.

With Zimbabwe’s economy in the doldrums, it’s just a matter of time before the repatriated individuals make their way back through the porous border and with the help of corrupt border officials.”

When I got home from the minister’s briefing, an acquaintance sent me a note which read: “South Africa’s crisis is not simply xenophobia – it is the collapse of accountability. The country carries a heavy burden of unemployed and desperate young men who have found in migrants a convenient target. When there is no work, no justice, and no consequence, criminality fills the vacuum, and foreigners pay the price for an economy and a state that has failed its own people.”