What will a new transitional government in Harare achieve?

The military coup (or palace coup, in-house purge, depending on how one views it) in Zimbabwe this week gripped the attention of millions around the world.

So much is expected of that southern African country and so long has been the wait for a change of president.

Will a Zimbabwe under a new head of state or government of national unity see a return to the prosperity of the 1970s?
Many of us still ask the question every time there is a change of government in Africa: Even if we have a smooth change of government or handover of power, how will that change the underlying structure of our societies?

Most African countries are faced with international balance of payments deficits.
Their economies might be growing, some of them at impressive rates, but the overall picture remains that they import far more than they export.
Manufacturing across Africa has been shrinking since 1980.

In 2000, the US government introduced the Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade arrangement intended to give African countries preferential access to the huge American market.
Of the 33 African countries that took part in the AGOA process, only four managed to meet their export quotas.
Two of those four (Angola and Nigeria) met their targets only because they exported petroleum products to the United States. The other two were South Africa and Mauritius or Botswana.

Africa’s biggest, more structural and more long-term problem is that of capacity: State capacity, city capacity, industrial capacity and personal and community capacity.
That is the common weakness that cuts across the continent, regardless of whether or not a country is led by a dictator or a democrat, runs along a multiparty political system or is a one-party state, has a life president or has presidential term limits.

The Arab Spring came and went but Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have since not seen a fundamental, structural change in their capacity.

Guinea, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania since 2008 have seen military coups intended to address abuses of power by their leaders and civilian governments, but none of these changes have led to a change in the underlying fact of the lack of state capacity.

Since 1991, Zambia, Senegal, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Liberia, Tanzania and other African countries have held multiparty general elections, have in place presidential term limits and are regarded generally as fairly credible democracies.

But underlying all that are the features discussed above: dependence on Chinese loans, equipment and expertise to build or repair their infrastructure; their main export earnings are primary agricultural or crude petroleum and petrochemical products; large trade deficits and high youth unemployment.
What will a new transitional government in Harare achieve for Zimbabwe? It’s hard to see.

In the early months and up to the first year, it will inject fresh optimism into the society, it will see new blood brought into certain key public offices, greater interest in and a willingness to offer assistance by Western governments and some initial soft loans and perhaps an increase in tourism and conferences.
The White commercial farmers who were uprooted and dispossessed of their land could return from South Africa, reclaim their farms, and lead to an increase in agricultural production.

But Zimbabwe will remain Zimbabwe. It will still depend for its export earnings on the traditional tobacco, minerals and dairy products.
These are the lines along which I am starting to view things these days. It is understandable our focus on the president and the cabinet, but the reality is that heads of state are limited in what they can achieve even when they are driven by the best of intentions.

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