Crise économique au Zimbabwe: Choisir entre extraversion et introversion comme stratégie de développement post-nationaliste

The Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are stalemated, in terms of both political and economic visions, at least until presidential elections occur (as expected) in 2002. The June 2000 parliamentary election did not clarify much, with ZANU PF and MDC each taking half of the roughly 2.5 million votes. ZANU PF's 62 seats (out of 120 contested) were augmented by 30 more, appointed directly by President Robert Mugabe. Points of immediate conflict in the economic sphere include the struggle over price controls (a short-term palliative to be sure, but a popular band aid to some of the inflationary problems); foreign exchange controls; repudiation of Mugabe-era debt mainly on grounds that IMF/Bank programs were incompetently designed; massive expansion and redirection of basic-needs state subsidies (e.g. of water and electricity prices) to low-income households; growing state ownership and worker control of important - and potentially viable - bankrupt private firms (and mines and farms); and a reorientation of budgetary spending and imports towards working-class and poor people's needs. As it stands today, virtually all of these logical social demands are likely to be rejected by Washington's Zimbabwe managers; in turn, they would gain a certain degree of resonance amongst left-nationalists in ZANU PF, and unequivocal hostility within the MDC's strong neoliberal flank. To make the case for a redistributive, inward-oriented economy, requires a substantial historical analysis, as well as an interpretation of what went so badly wrong during the 1990s.