Mutumwa Mawere

When one looks back at the last 31 years of post-colonial nation state building experience with specific reference to the relationship between claimants from the income produced by human effort, it is ironic that a relationship that ought to be supportive, complementary and enabling has been characterised by friction, anger, and counter-productive actions.

Both artificial and natural persons generate income from services rendered and goods produced.

The three social partners, ie, government, labour and employers, all have an interest in the income produced by those that choose Zimbabwe as a theatre to engage in economic activities.

Employees have a contractual claim against the income generated whereas employers and government have a non-contractual relationship with entities that produce income.

The government, on behalf of the people, has a claim on income generated and such a claim is and ought to be in lieu of the services that the government should render under an agreed social contract.

Employers are only entitled to income that the enterprises after paying taxes do not want to appropriate to themselves in the form of retained earnings.

It is self-evident that the flow of cash is more important that cash itself. In generating income, there are costs that have to be incurred including the cost of labour.

If the income generated is greater than the costs incurred, then an enterprise is able to realise a profit. To whom should the profit generated by an enterprise belong?

To the employees, the income distribution should be skewed in their favour

Equally, it is natural for State actors to hold the view that the distribution of income should be skewed in the favour of government often forgetting that the more the government collects in terms of taxes the less employers are free to be part of an unjust and punitive social contract.

Employers, who after all are the risk takers, feel rightly or wrongly that after paying to employees what they are due in terms of their contracts and discharging the tax obligations, they are entitled to any residual income generated without having to be ridiculed and given defamatory labels.

Is it not ironic that those who climb the opportunity ladder from the poor do so in a free enterprise system through service and yet are often despised for daring?

A nation state is a human creature that can only sustain itself from the effort of its economic agents.

If it's true that income generators provide meaning to the promise that any nation State should deliver, then how is it that the post-colonial state experience has produced toxic relationships between the social partners?

Is it the true purpose of the State to do what citizens can do for themselves?

Is it the case that a country could best advance its cause if all its citizens were employers? Not all citizens can work in the State and even if it were feasible that the State could be the omnibus employer, this would not produce the kind of outcomes that are necessary to advance human progress.

Zimbabwe inherited a fairly sophisticated mining, industrial, agricultural and financial services infrastructure whose players were not and still remain ideologically and psychologically alienated from the worldview of the people who occupied positions in the post-colonial State administration.

The face of an employer regrettably has tended to take a racial context. The face of the State has not changed for the last 31 years.

The face of the providers of labour remains black and to a large extent is alienated from the providers of employment whether it is in the State or private sector.

Although the labour market ought to have been democratised with the advent of independence, it remains friction-ridden and distorted.

The attitude of State actors to the enterprise of income generation still reflects the same attitude that informed the liberation struggle.

A simplistic assumption is often made that the State can easily replace the ingenuity and creativeness of self-interested individuals in the business of wealth creation.

The inheritance market has its own lessons that must not be ignored in our conversations about what kind of Zimbabwe we want to see. Many have inherited wealth only to lose it.

There is nothing inevitable in the business of wealth creation.

The last 31 years has been rewarding for a few and it must be remarked that the people who have increased their wealth under a black-led administration are the very people that feel excluded on issues of national development.

The majority of the members of the ruling party remain at the bottom of the economic ladder yet there is a general assumption that there is a causal link between business success and politics.

If one were to look at the ranks of the political institutions, it is easy to see that the last 31 years have not assisted in assimilating employers into politics.

After 31 years of independence, the real contestation for political power has tended to be between actors originating from the labour and the liberation movements with the support of intellectuals on either side.

The social partners who share an interest in income generation often behave as if they do not share a common destiny and future. What then should be the role of the State?

What should be the role of the private sector? What should be the role of labour?

One lesson that can be drawn from the post-colonial experience is that the compartmentalisation of the nation into silos where politicians acquire a certain personality, business players act as if they are not part of the society from which they want to generate wealth, and the providers of labour act as if they have the monopoly to the labour market is not healthy for any nation.

Ultimately, the success or failure of any nation state has to depend on the kind of relationship that can be forged between the social partners.

The real challenge for any nation that seeks to lift itself up is to realise that the business of business ought to be left to opportunity seekers and risk takers.

Wages and salaries are linked to contracts, taxes are linked to income and yet profit is a consequence of many variables including performance, luck, effort and competition.

Although the three social partners are equally important, it is vital that efforts are made to encourage idiots to make money from which wages and salaries can be drawn and taxes collected.

Mutumwa Mawere is a businessman based in South Africa. He writes in his personal capacity. Contact:mmawere@africaheritage.com