Why Brand Zimbabwe is a little more than a palliative solution for Zimbabwe’s issues
Author: Munashe Mataranyika, Stanford Masters in International Policy ’23
In July or August of 2023, Zimbabwe will head into its second national elections since the ousting of former President Robert Mugabe, who governed the country for nearly 40 years since its independence from Britain. Amidst campaigning efforts by opposition parties and calls for citizens to register to vote all over social media, the government also introduced new policies and initiatives to shore up political support and address what it perceived to be barriers to Zimbabwe’s development. One of the new initiatives is “Brand Zimbabwe”, which was introduced in early September of this year. According to The Herald, one of the largest pro-State newspapers in the country, the project is meant to “enhance the country’s domestic and international appeal to investors and tourists.”
The minister of information and broadcasting services, Monica Mutsvangwa, noted in her speech at the project’s launch that it was also meant to “proffer a new national identity and a refreshing image which would put hope and prosperity as national driving forces” among the Zimbabwean people. Brand Zimbabwe’s website presents the idea as a platform for some form of collective input to document Zimbabweans’ feelings, perspectives, and experiences. The ultimate goal is to “eliminate negative” perspectives about Zimbabwe and thus restore ordinary Zimbabweans’ confidence in their country as well as to improve the narratives of the country to outsiders. In short, the project is meant to attract investors and boost the economy; and the method used to achieve this is akin to a self-awareness exercise one would do with their therapist, but at a national level.
Could brand Zimbabwe be useful in addressing the unique challenges we see occurring in Zimbabwe?
Yes, I would agree that a broad commitment to changing Zimbabwe’s global reputation and negative image is important for the socioeconomic development of the country. In an attempt at this, President Mnangagwa has been pursuing his “Zimbabwe is open for business” policy since taking power in 2018. The Herald claims that this policy has been “luring” investors, who have been taking “opportunities across all sectors of the Second Republic’s economy”, although this does not appear to be the consensus among economists and financial analysis institutions. The Herald also claims that “tourist arrivals have been on the rise” and that Brand Zimbabwe is meant to touch up the perceptions of the country “to reflect the changed national circumstances”. Therefore, there is some value to be extracted from this process. In its simplest form, it could be a way for the government to rally the Zimbabwean people behind efforts to map out the country’s comparative strengths in the global trade arena and reposition the country in global markets.
However, the government has misdiagnosed the causes of Zimbabwe’s negative image and so Brand Zimbabwe cannot, in its current state, provide a realistic solution. Minister Mutsvangwa mentioned in her speech how the country used to be known for its agricultural aptitude and how the “neocolonial onslaught” that came after the Land Reform policies of the early 2000s began this unjust tirade against the country. However, it was the very same land reform policies that shattered the agricultural sector, lowered productivity, and ultimately contributed significantly to the dramatic economic failure and the hyperinflation that Zimbabwe is infamous for by the time the 2008 crisis hit the world. These Land Reform policies, also referred to as the “land grab” policies, saw the unconstitutional seizure of predominantly white-owned farms with the aim of redistributing this land to black citizens as a way of correcting the colonial legacy that had skewed land ownership in the country.
In reality, the entire Land Reform process became just another feature of clientelism within the State and the farms were allocated not according to the agricultural capacity and expertise of their new potential owners, but predominantly according to their proximity to influential political patrons within the ruling party.
In addition to western narratives, the current government also identifies sanctions as a major cause for Zimbabwe’s poor economy and image. In actual fact, sanctions implemented in Zimbabwe by the United States were placed on a targeted list of individuals and entities associated with the ruling party, its patronage system, and the human rights violations committed by the political elite. Although we cannot completely sanitize the history of western policies towards African countries, nor should we desire to, that alone does not negate the validity of the charges against the political elite in Zimbabwe that led to these sanctions. An example of this being the arrests of prominent journalists and figures known to be critical of the government and ruling party such as Hopewell Chin’ono and internationally renowned author Tsitsi Dangarebga, among many others. ]Therefore, in the same vein, blaming sanctions as the sole (or even most prominent) reason for Zimbabwe’s bad image, in order to justify this rebranding exercise, is equally a faulty argument.
If we assume that the crafting of the Brand Zimbabwe project is not entirely disingenuous and reflects some level of desire to improve the state of affairs in Zimbabwe by changing Zimbabwe’s domestic and international image, then the very premise of this project is misguided. While it may be true that Western narratives on African countries can be heavily biased and often oscillate between the tropes of political instability, poverty, and disease, as seen from how Zimbabwe has become the world’s go-to reference for hyperinflation and economic disarray, it is not entirely correct to say that these narratives are the cause of Zimbabwe’s negative image, as has been claimed by proponents of Brand Zimbabwe.
What then are the true causes of Zimbabwe’s negative image and what is happening in the country right now?
About 86% of Zimbabwe’s economy is informal, according to the recently published National Financial Inclusion Strategy Phase 2 document, intended to cover the period of 2022 to 2026. This is a concerning fact because it essentially means that Zimbabwe’s financial and economic growth is inhibited from a fiscal and monetary perspective because the revenue and profits being generated within the country do not enter any formal revenue streams. Therefore, while productivity and personal investment may somewhat be increasing steadily as Zimbabweans continuously adapt to the high annual inflation rate (which had risen to 268% as of October 2022) and the lack of an effective currency, with an inability to impose a tax on the informal sector, it is nearly impossible to derive real economic value or growth from the productivity observed in it.
The “open for business” campaign saw multiple policy directions over the last four years including “austerity for prosperity” measures, the re-introduction of the Zimbabwe dollar as the Real Time Gross Settlement Dollar (RTGS), Nostro accounts and many other accompanying policies that would not be useful to recount. However, aside from policy briefings and expensive trips to the East, none of these measures have materialized into anything of note. More specifically, Mnangagwa’s government has not been able to fulfill the most important election promise, and probably the biggest expectation Zimbabweans had of him, economic growth and stability.
Zimbabweans are tired of the economic instability and worsening living conditions. “Nhasi rate riri pachii?” (“What is the rate today?”) or “Murikushandisa rate ripi?” (“Which rate are you using” because there are often multiple, a reflection of the informal economy) are common conversation starters that the average Zimbabwean, who has no extensive knowledge of economics or how foreign exchange rates work conventionally, will have before purchasing a loaf of bread, buying fuel, or performing any other basic task. The reason is Zimbabwe’s RTGS dollar, which is what most citizens receive their wages in, is an unreliable currency and it is therefore preferred to exchange RTGS for United States dollars in order to retain some value over one’s money. However, due to how valuable the US dollar is, it is also disadvantageous to buy basic groceries, for which prices are constantly changing, in USD and so Zimbabweans must do a daily dance between the two currencies, exchanging just enough to buy the essentials they need at that moment and storing the rest in USD. Ultimately, it would not be a wild assertion to say that nothing matters more to Zimbabweans than the economy right now.
That is not to say there are no other dire issues that are affecting Zimbabweans severely, including the state of healthcare, lack of social welfare, political repression and violence, and so on, but that at the core of the Zimbabwean struggle are the unlivable economic conditions. For example, in addition to the challenges within the economy, Zimbabwe’s healthcare system has become dismayingly dilapidated, with major public hospitals lacking basic equipment, medicines, and unlivable wages for medical staff. The dire situation within the healthcare sector has been an issue for several years and doctors and nurses have consistently been on strike for the last three years.
Similarly, there is a shameful lack of resources and funding for Zimbabwe’s public schools and education system in the country that once had the highest literacy rate in Africa. Unemployment aside, many university graduates that are “employed” do not work in their fields of study and are instead often self-employed selling various goods such as produce, calling cards (commonly referred to as airtime) on the streets and at traffic lights, acting as foreign exchange and money change agents for the black market, or employed in low-skill and low-paying jobs such as till operators and attendants at fast-food outlets, supermarkets, and fuel stations.
Therefore, while I do agree that Zimbabwe is in need of rebranding, at the root of the solution should be an accurate assessment of the state the country is in. Negative images are not always derived from thin air or bad press, and much less so in the case of Zimbabwe.
There is a reason why investors find Zimbabwe to be high risk and thus are divesting from and hesitant to invest in the country. It has more to do with the lack of a safe business environment, characterized by volatile exchange rates due to Zimbabwe’s dysfunctional currency regime, constantly changing fiscal policies and monetary instruments (such as the sudden introduction of gold coins in the third quarter of this year), and corruption in the handling and awarding of tenders (such as Laptop gate earlier this year in which a government agency attempted to purchase new laptops for the price of US$9,000 each) than it does with sanctions and Western narratives. All this in addition to the human rights violations that have become as much of a cultural monument as The Great Zimbabwe, beginning with Gukurahundi, Zimbabwe’s own genocide that has yet to be acknowledged by the country’s leaders. Simply put, the idea that the Big Bad West is to blame for Zimbabwe’s global reputation is willfully ignorant at best and a reflection of damaging disinformation at its worst.
By centering the causes of Zimbabwe’s negative image on Western propaganda, and countering that with even more propaganda to “prove” how well the country is doing, the government of Zimbabwe is taking away from the harsh reality its citizens face daily. Not only that but they are also wasting an opportunity to improve the lives of average Zimbabweans. The government should instead turn its focus towards improving the country’s poor and underperforming economy. To do that, it would also need to address the autocratic dictatorship form of governance that has resulted in fundamental structural failures such as corruption, gross mismanagement of national funds, and a de facto single-party state in which the ruling party, ZANU-PF, controls all branches of government, including institutions that are meant to be independent (such as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, responsible for next year’s elections).
With elections coming up in the first half of 2023, is this project useful?
This project feels not only out of touch, much like President Mnangagwa’s supposed perfume line as an election campaign strategy, but also more like a decoy that belongs on an Instagram timeline than it does an actual achievable and careful national strategy by the government of Zimbabwe. For a rebranding of the country to make sense, reforms in governance that would reflect on the well-being of the socio-economic, health, and political sectors of the country would seem like the most intuitive answer; and yet that is not the direction that the government of Zimbabwe has chosen to pursue.
Mnangagwa’s administration had been positioned to receive international support in 2017, amid hopes that Mugabe’s ousting would signal a long-awaited change in Zimbabwe’s history of authoritative rule. Had the “Second Republic” ushered in and implemented tangible changes for the Zimbabwean population, while deviating from the brutal repression, rampant corruption, and blatant election fraud that marked its predecessor, would the country’s image not have improved? It is therefore only reasonable to conclude that while Zimbabwe is indeed due for an image rebranding, the solution to its negative image is not a surface-level psychological conditioning exercise, but the implementation of stable policy and structural reforms that would restore the Zimbabwean people’s confidence in the government and in the country’s institutions and systems, while providing a secure environment for innovation and investment. In short, Zimbabwe can only truly rebrand through reform and not psychology.
Munashe Mataranyika is a Master’s in International Policy candidate at Stanford, specializing in Governance and Development. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oklahoma where she earned a degree in International and Area Studies with a concentration on Africa, and a minor in French. She is a Shelby Davis Scholar, a Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, as well as a fellow under the Susan R. McCaw Fund at Stanford.
Having been born and raised in Zimbabwe, Munashe’s interests are to explore comparative sociopolitics in developing countries from a post-colonial perspective. She has written on topics that reflect her academic interests such as climate change preparedness in the Southern African Development Community and the necessity of nuanced discourse around threats to Western democracy. At Stanford, Munashe hopes to further study the varying dynamics of the impact of development, as both practice and theory, on governance and civil society across the African continent and within the Southern African region in particular.
