Of Barclays Zimbabwe  and “those Malawians”

In his rush to use the transaction to feed the “Zimbabwe is finished” narrative, Biti suggests a “poor country” like Malawi cannot be home to a foreign investor who goes to a supposedly larger market.

In this world, the entire $39 billion in African M&A last year all flowed from wealthier markets to smaller ones.

Also, he would have us believe, a businessman that happens to hail from a smaller economy cannot play in a larger market, because that means something is wrong with that bigger market.

If we are to use that logic, Tata Communications should not have sold Neotel to Strive Masiyiwa and his Liquid Telecom in that R6.5 billion deal.

Tata should have found an investor out of Europe or America, lest South Africa be offended at its second fixed network operator being bought by a company owned by an African man originally from poor Zimbabwean.

Investment has long since ceased to have a colour and identity.

The time when lazy bureaucrats would ply Western capitals hunting for FDI is long gone.

We cannot demand FDI, and yet turn around and demand that it comes from preferred regions, or nationalities.

A case of “we need foreign investment, just not from over there”.

It would have been enlightening had reaction been about the suitability of FMB as a buyer itself – and there is much to be debated about that.

However, the reaction from Biti and Chipanga was nothing about the questionable record of banks owned by FMB shareholders in Uganda, Kenya and elsewhere.

Instead, the gripe was not with the credibility of FMB, but simply that they were “those Malawians”.

Lawyer Fadzayi Mahere also pointed out that a Malawian bank had bought what was once “Zimbabwe’s most prestigious banks”.

It is a view not only tainted by Zimbabweans old xenophobic tendencies and exceptionalism, but a view fed by the mistaken belief that we still are in a position to pick and choose investors.

Diving into all this drama was the Affirmative Action Group (AAG), a club where the concepts of empowerment and asset stripping are taken as randomly interchangeable.

This week, AAG demanded to see President Mugabe over the Barclays sale to a foreign entity.

“The bank can’t go to a foreigner,” AAG head Chamu Chiwanza said to reporters.

“Barclays Plc can’t impose who can buy equity on us.”

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