Abstract
The authors examine the first decade of Zimbabwe’s independence from 1980 to 1990 in terms of the country’s economic performance. They show how early robust post-independence economic growth rates soon dropped to more moderate levels, setting the pattern for subsequent years with the economy continually failing to create enough jobs for a growing population, resulting in persistent budget deficits and a growing domestic and foreign debt. They draw attention to early signs of ruling party mistrust of markets and private sector-led growth, and slow progress in the area of land reform which stored up trouble for the future, as well as indications that the ruling party intended to change Zimbabwe’s political governance systems to facilitate the establishment of a one-party system. Tracking the country’s growing economic difficulties during the first decade of independence, they show how these were to eventually compel the ruling party to adopt an economic structural adjustment programme.
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Notes
- 1.
As the Government’s subsequent economic reform programme in 1991 was to note: “not only do public enterprises absorb a large proportion of recurrent budgetary expenditure in direct subsidies, grants and advances from government, but as a group they produce very small returns, if any, on capital invested” (GOZ 1991: Annex 1, 1).
- 2.
The agreement, part of Pretoria’s strategy of strengthening the economies of neighbouring, minority-ruled states, gave manufacturers in Southern Rhodesia preferential access to the South African market. When both Zambia and Malawi imposed sanctions against Southern Rhodesia after its UDI in November 1965, Rhodesian firms switched their exports to South Africa with the clothing, textile and furniture industries being the main beneficiaries. By the time of the 1979 Lancaster House Conference, an estimated 75 percent of Rhodesia’s manufactured exports were being sold to South Africa . After independence , South Africa remained Zimbabwe’s top trading partner, but with the deterioration in relations between the two countries Zimbabwe firms began to lose their preferential treatment in the South African market.
- 3.
In the aftermath of Independence , in line with the path taken by other liberation movements and despite its earlier Maoist leanings, ZANU was to nurture closer ties with Moscow as China proved unable to match the USSR’s ability to provide the economic, military, diplomatic, and technical assistance required to consolidate it rule.
- 4.
The regular granting of such pardons in the context of state-sponsored violence throughout Zimbabwe’s post-independence history has not, however, allayed the fears of perpetrators that with a change in regime they might be brought to trial for human rights violations, either by domestic courts or by the increasingly long reach of international courts. Such fears help to explain both the deep reluctance of ZANU-PF and its supporters in the security forces to contemplate change, as well as their willingness to support Mugabe who often projected himself as a bulwark against the reach of international criminal tribunals.
- 5.
Named after the state-owned car assembly plant in Harare , investigative journalists revealed that in the course of 1988–1989 party notables had used their privileged access to buy vehicles cheaply at a time when imports were tightly controlled, and sold them on at considerable mark-ups to private dealers.
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Simpson, M., Hawkins, T. (2018). Zimbabwe’s First Decade: Building the One-Party State and Controlling the Economy. In: The Primacy of Regime Survival. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72520-8_3
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