Primitive Accumulation and Mugabe’s Extroverted Economy: What Now Under the Second Republic?

Abstract

This chapter reveals how a disarticulated pattern of accumulation configures periphery economies, such as Zimbabwe, to subsidise capital by exporting wealth, thus aiding the further development of the centre at the expense of the periphery. The intentions of Mnangagwa’s ‘Zimbabwe is Open for Business’ plan are therefore plain. What would an alternative Movement for Democratic Change government have meant? Would there have been a different narrative? This chapter will answer these questions to reveal how Zimbabwe’s future economy may take shape, using a political economy lens. The nexus between politics, policy and economic development trajectories will be revealed. The chapter proposes transformative social policies and inclusive policies in which development is achieved from below, as a means of counteracting primitive capital accumulation. The ‘Zimbabwe is Open for Business’ economic development path exposes the structurally disarticulated economy to an intensified dispossession of reproduction capacity by global monopoly capital through financialised primitive capital accumulation. The new ruling class imposed by the military coup is inclined towards promoting global capital interests that perpetuate imperialism and dependency. In alliance with monopoly finance capital, the ruling class extracts substantial profits by intensifying the extraction of natural mineral and agricultural resources in the form of surplus value, royalties, and rents and interest on loans, all of which undermines sovereign accumulation. By opening Zimbabwe for business, under the guise of attracting foreign direct investment and without a deliberate plan to reverse uneven development, the ruling capitalists have become an extension of global capital, if not captured agents for the latest form of imperialism. Opening Zimbabwe for business therefore creates an avenue that transfers surplus value through international trade, unequal exchange and unequal rewards.