Eddie Cross: A strange advocate for equity

He has described the historic process as an “illegal assets grab” and remains opposed to black people’s land ownership and economic participation.He cannot profess parity now.

Hypocrite...Eddie Cross

Tichaona Zindoga
Could this be true, or some sense has contrived to fool my understanding?
Such could be the reaction if one were to come across a February 3 article by MDC-T’s Eddie Cross in which he speaks about equity, God, care and humanity.
Cross’ submission was based on a research on the subject of social equality where Japan is the most equal society in the world with Brazil and South Africa the most unequal.
Then Cross tells us the virtues of equity.
“It’s important because if you view humanity as God does, each person is a special creation that has value for its own sake and therefore has value and deserves recognition, care and respect. Giving people dignity and worth is a goal that is always worth pursuing – either as a society or as an individual,” he says.
He recalls an incident in which George Bush Sr was selected as the candidate for the Presidency and he stood and in hand “a small Mongoloid boy – a grandson”, who was seemingly unaware of the crowd and his oddity. That would have earned Bush Cross’ vote if Cross were a voting American.
Cross then recalls his own magnanimity during his time as CEO of a “major company” when he facilitated the conversion of a “tea boy” into an entrepreneur, serving more quality teas and cakes and sandwiches.
“In the process he increased his income but the greatest impact was that we gave him dignity and purpose,” says Cross.
“At the root of the process of building a more equitable and decent society is concern for those at the bottom of the pile. At the heart of Christianity is a concern for the poor and disadvantaged. Most in our materialistic societies view this as charity, it’s not…”
It will be useful to test Cross’s Christianity, God, humanity and care for “those at bottom of the pile”.
Patrick Bond, author of a 1998 book, Uneven Zimbabwe: A Study of Finance, Development and Underdevelopment, in 2000 wrote a paper on Eddie Cross and the economic thrust of the MDC party of which Cross was the economic secretary. Bond said Cross came “from a faction that has long supported the introduction of structural adjustment, and which applauded Mugabe for turning to free-market policies during the 1990s.”
Despite a decade of failure, Cross told a weekly in 1999 that: “We in industry believe that the only way to make a significant impact is to comply fully with the IMF conditions.”
Then in a speech entitled Zimbabwe at the Economic Crossroads: Which Way Forward, he railed against Government’s efforts to cushion the ordinary man captured in the Millennium Recovery Programme.
He described it as “toilet paper… worth nothing. Complete junk.”
Apart from advocating for Government’s non-interference “in the way in which people manage their lives”, and reduced levels of taxation, Cross touted privatization.
Said Cross: “We are going to fast track privatisation. All 50 government parastatals will be privatised within a two-year time frame, but we are going far beyond that. We are going to privatise many of the functions of government. We are going to privatise the Central Statistical Office. We are going to privatise virtually the entire school delivery system.”
Workforce would drop from 300,000 to 75,000 in five years.”
That was 2000.
Anyone with honesty and decency cannot mention equity and God in the same line as IMF or Esap.
Structural adjustment and IMF programmes sever State social responsibility for the profit of a few corporates and individuals. Inequality goes up. The rich become richer, the poor poorer.
That is the privatization that Cross wanted to “fast track” if and when MDC-T got into power. Whence this’ piousness today?
It is hypocrisy.
Remember it was the same Cross that enjoyed the Zimbabweans’ suffering preferring to “let the bus crash and burn” if MDC-T could not have power?
Power to do what? Commit the country to the politics of IMF and privatization!
Cross has been against programmes such as the land reform that benefitted millions of blacks Zimbabweans.
He has described the historic process as an “illegal assets grab” and remains opposed to black people’s land ownership and economic participation.
He cannot profess parity now.
Nor does Cross he like indigenisation. “It is all nonsense,” is what Cross wrote on indigenisation on July 13, 2012,“we do not have the expertise and technology to run these firms and we certainly do not have the money…”
The “we” of course never meant himself, the Great grandson of the GW Cross, a pioneering Rhodesian.
It meant the black man forever to work for white master.
But that is to be expected.
It only becomes queer when his other corner of the mouth begins to talk equity, God, Christianity and those “at the bottom of the pile”.