Getting Fed-Up With An Unruly Neighbour

The economic hardships in Zimbabwe are stoking domestic problems. Zanu-PF might have crossed a line with Pretoria.

- Peter Fabricius

Zimbabwe is deeply dependent on South Africa, perhaps more so than is commonly realized. About 41% of Zimbabwe’s imports come from SA, 60% of its exports are to SA and 80% of its exports go through SA, as Bulawayo business executive Busia Moyo, who also chairs the Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (Zida), told a Chatham House webinar on 8 September. And he said SA had also recently overtaken the UK as the largest investor in Zimbabwe.

So, there was a lot SA could do to help fix the Zimbabwean economy, Moyo thought. The high trade and investment interdependence – coupled with the large amounts of remittances from the many Zimbabweans in SA – meant that the Zimbabwean economy was already deeply integrated into SA’s. It would thus make sense for Zimbabwe to make much greater use of the rand, and less of the US dollar or the succession of local currencies it has recently been experimenting with – now back to the Zimbabwe dollar – all of them prone to precipitous depreciation.

But when SA proposed to Zimbabwe a few years ago that it would make sense to join the rand system, the ruling Zanu-PF flatly rejected the idea, largely out of jealous pride in its own worthless money.

Yet, the same sort of statistics which Moyo quoted also give the ANC government in Pretoria tremendous economic leverage over the Zanu-PF government in Harare on this and other issues – if it chose to use it.