harare24dmin This letter serves as a necessary and stark intervention a demand that you cease your ceaseless, self-serving complaints and look inward at the value, or lack thereof, that you offer to the nation. For too long, you have occupied the privileged position of a “protected industry,” a title you treat not as a responsibility for national development, but as a license for predatory profiteering.
Your persistent lobbying for import restrictions, subsidies, and preferential exchange rate treatment rings hollow when contrasted with your output. You cry for government intervention, demanding protection from regional and international competition, yet your protected status shields incompetence, not innovation. The infant industry argument is exhausted when its beneficiaries—your executives—drive luxury vehicles (Range Rovers, Land Cruisers, Mercedes Benzes) that compete with the fleet of government ministers.
What exactly are we, the Zimbabwean consumers, paying for? We are paying exorbitant, domestically controlled prices for goods that are substandard, frequently malfunction, and fail regional quality checks. From construction materials that prematurely rust and crumble to electrical appliances that pose fire hazards, your failure to prioritize quality has eroded the public’s trust. No amount of patriotic marketing can mask the fundamental truth: local products offer poor value for money.
The financial structure of your organizations is not one of a struggling, national pillar, but of a predatory cartel dedicated to massive wealth transfer upwards.
Your profit margins are indefensibly high, maintained only by the artificial barriers government erects to keep cheaper, superior alternatives out. You charge consumers heavily for compromised quality.
The obscene decompression ratio between executive compensation and the shop-floor wage is a national disgrace. While management commands salaries and benefits packages that facilitate lifestyles of excessive luxury, the majority of your dedicated staff languish on minimum wage, unable to afford basic necessities, often working for companies they cannot afford to buy from.
The wealth generated by your protected status is not being shared with the workers who create it, nor is it adequately contributed to the nation’s future. We observe consistent, clever utilization of investment vehicles and accounting practices designed to under-declare true earnings, minimize tax liabilities, and contribute the bare minimum to mandatory schemes like the National Social Security Authority (NSSA). You actively erode the public revenue base required for hospitals and schools while simultaneously demanding infrastructure and stability from the state.
Your current model is not a driver of economic growth; it is a spanner in the gears of development. You stifle competition, prevent the natural emergence of high-value, export-oriented firms, and directly contribute to the cost-of-living crisis by maintaining artificially inflated prices for essential goods. Your endless complaints about the operating environment only serve to distract from your fundamental commercial failure: the failure to innovate, the failure to be competitive, and the failure to remunerate your people fairly.
The time for protectionism predicated on incompetence and greed is over. The government’s agenda for growth and stability is being compromised by an industrial sector that acts as a protected predator.
We demand that the Government of Zimbabwe immediately:
End preferential treatment and protective duties for local industries that consistently fail to meet regional quality and pricing standards. Allow competition to correct the market distortions you have created.
Introduce and rigorously enforce a living wage standard and crack down on executive remuneration that is fundamentally disconnected from company performance and worker productivity.
Conduct immediate, thorough audits of earnings declarations and pension contributions to penalize companies engaged in tax minimization and underpayment.
You must accept the reality: if your products cannot compete with regional imports on quality and price in a truly free market, you do not deserve to survive. Your survival should not be a burden subsidized by poor consumers and poor workers. The people of Zimbabwe deserve value, quality, and a fair share of the wealth generated in their name.
Stop Complaining, Start Competing, or Step Aside.
