- by Interviewer: Floyd Kermode
- The Guardian
- Issue #2127
Farai Maripira with Floyd Kermode interviewer, and Guardian editor.
The Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) has been the governing party of Zimbabwe since it won independence in 1980, and changed the country’s name from the colonial title ‘Rhodesia’ to Zimbabwe.
ZANU-PF came to power after a protracted fight for liberation, sometimes known as the ‘Rhodesian Bush War.’ The party’s first president told the party congress that it stood for “democracy, socialism, nationalism, one man/one vote, freedom, pan-Africanism, non-racism, and republicanism.”
The Guardian, The Workers’ Weekly caught up with ZANU-PF information director Farai Maripira recently to ask what’s happening for the party and the country.
Guardian: How is the situation in Zimbabwe at the moment?
Maripira: The situation is very stable for the party. We have the full support of our people. We are not where we want to be economically, so we are, as a people, never at a point where we have achieved all that we need to. If we do that, we will become stagnant. We never want to become complacent.
Economically, the picture is good. Since the re-election of Mnangagwa in 2023, we have continued to grow the economy. We have broken records for the production of wheat, tobacco, and maize. We have seen a progressive rise in platinum production, with companies increasing production. Lithium is one of our major foreign currency earners, thanks to the rise of electric vehicles.
Guardian: Is Zimbabwe still under sanctions? How to they affect the country?
Maripira: The sanctions gives us the image of a pariah state, which does affect us internationally and economically. The sanctions on Zimbabwe are illegal and unilateral, from the USA and the European Union. The UK has lifted its sanctions, but we remain kicked out of the Commonwealth from which we were illegally expelled. Sanctions affect our ease of doing business, making it much harder to compete on the world stage – some companies avoid investing.
Guardian: Have there been any positive effects of the sanctions?
Maripira: As with some other countries in the same boat, sanctions have taught us to buckle up, and that only we can be the masters of our destiny. Before sanctions, Zimbabwe was largely run by international companies. When those companies closed en masse, we fell into an economic spiral, but from those ashes we’ve created a Zimbabwe that is largely owned and run by the indigenous people. More than 60 per cent of our top foreign currency earners are run by the people of Zimbabwe.
Guardian: We’re doing this interview while at a seminar in China. How have Zimbabe’s relations with China been?
Maripira: China helped immensely during the liberation struggle, when learning Marxist ideology from Mao tse Tung taught us to communicate our goals with the people. We liked and applied his saying “the people are the water and we are the fish.” This adage helped us through our struggle for independence, because prior to that, our liberation fighters just fought, but had a lot of setbacks. Our president was one of the first cadres to come for training in China. We were not taught military or guerilla tactics, but we learned about integrating with the people, and have remained a formidable fighting force to this day.
Guardian: It’s interesting about Marxist-Leninism and the ZANU-PF. Are there any other developments you can talk about?
Maripira: We have started industrialising our villages, developing production in situ instead of the old model in which the villages just farm things which are taken elsewhere. This speaks to the communist ideal of empowering communities and the people as a whole, and ensuring that the benefits of the state reach the individual on a personal level.
Citizens must be able to say to themselves “I am connected to the state. I have benefited.” In pursuance of this ideal, we have embarked on a project called ‘devolution’ under President Mnangagwa. This ensures that development reaches every community and every household. In the past, decisions were centralised. Now each province has been given semi-autonomy to identify and focus on its own growth.
In Zimbabwe, under President Mnangagwa, we have been pursuing what we call Vision 2030. This aims at Zimbabwe becoming an upper-middle income economy by 2030. It’s partly inspired by the Chinese, but is tailored to suit our ends, just as the Chinese have tailored socialism to suit their ends.
