Freedom is Important
I will always recall a statement in a National Executive meeting of the MDC in its early days when one of our elder Statesmen who was a senior Zanla War Veteran stood up and simply stated “freedom is important”. Just that, he stated it as a primary truth which had application in all areas of Party Policy and activity.
The fight for liberation throughout the world has been a struggle for freedom – freedom to choose who will govern us, freedom to choose who we mix with and are associated, freedom to choose where we live, freedom to decide how we will live.
People with power have most often throughout history tried to limit our freedoms – freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom of movement. But today I want to discuss economic freedoms. When we formed the GNU in February 2009, the Minister of Finance stood up and made a simple, 30 minute statement. In those few minutes he lifted all exchange controls, all price controls, all restrictions on the sale of gold and all import restrictions, currency controls were abandoned. Things we had taken as given for 50 years were swept away. Zimbabwe became the freest economy in the world.
The resulting surge in growth of State revenues was dramatic: