Zimbabwe’s Economic Interventionist Policies: Critical Issues and Perspectives

Abstract

History has shown that it is customary for the long-time ruling party, ZANU PF, to conjure economic blueprints, with the current Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimASSET) being the latest in a string of similar adventures. This article provides a critical analysis of a cocktail of piece-meal economic policies prior to ZimAsset, including the disreputable Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Act of 2008 which was meant to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), but ended up scaring away potential investors.1 It argues that given that ZimAsset’s implementation is premised on the availability of financial resources, which the country does not have and that FDI is not trickling in, it is bound to fail.

Keywords: Economic policy, ZimAsset, ZANU PF, Foreign Direct Investment, Plethora

Professor, Bindura University E-mail: mapuva@gmail.com