This brief report describes Zimbabwe’s second five-year national development plan, which was published on 13 February 1992 and will involve both public and private sector reforms. The viability of the 5-year plan is threatened by the drought and the Land Bill in terms of both domestic productivity and international support. The private sector export industry, on whom the government is relying for the success of its 5-year plan, will be severely affected by the drought. The international financial community also seems oblivious to the long-term implications of this reform: political backlash that could derail the reforms.
The conclusion is that the central dichotomy undermining the second 5-year plan is that the effects of the urban-biased reforms catering to the first world minority sector will be felt most strongly by the rural majority involved in subsistence agriculture. This majority, while bearing the socio-economic burden of reform, will reap few benefits as these will largely accrue to the urban commercial and industrial classes.
Being the majority, this group poses a threat to the stability of the government. Therefore, to prevent the reforms from being derailed, the Zimbabwe government has attempted to cushion the social impact, but these politically motivated concessions, often run counter to the purposes of economic reform and so threaten the viability of the 5-year plan.
