Conviction, Convention, and the Call for a New Zimbabwean Policy Mindset

HARARE – In a country where decades of policy missteps have birthed structural economic stagnation, the time has come to reframe the discourse on policymaking—not just as a technical exercise but as a deeply moral undertaking. Zimbabwe doesn’t suffer from a shortage of plans. It suffers from a shortage of conviction-driven policymaking that fuses theory with praxis, heart with mind, and long-term vision with real-time adaptability.

Dr Gideon Gono captures it poignantly in his book titled Zimbabwe’s Casino Economy: “If convention is about what is correct, conviction is about what is right.” Convention is technocratic. Conviction is human. Policymaking cannot be a cold calculation of numbers alone—it must be a reflection of national conscience. A policymaker who makes decisions purely on the basis of technical soundness, while ignoring the soul of the nation, may win applause from consultants but will lose the trust of the people. Of course, in his case as the governor, a lot went wrong in the process of trying to apply this because what he thought was right was against what everyone else believed in, but this does not take away the beauty of the concept.

This concept is especially true in the Zimbabwean context, where economic decisions have far-reaching social and political consequences. Consider the liberalisation policies of the late 1990s that enabled the rise of Heritage Investment Bank, NMB, Kingdom Bank, Econet, and the list goes on and on. It wasn’t just policy that unlocked that moment—it was conviction anchored by a belief in Zimbabwean enterprise. After the economy had forced his hand, Patrick Chinamasa liberalised the economy in 2009, and in no time all the struggles people faced suddenly vanished because citizens and economic agents were given the chance to decide their own fate. It took courage to act, vision to align with partners, and resilience to challenge the status quo. Policy, in that instance, became not a script but a platform for strategic creativity.

But to institutionalise that creativity, we must grasp a deeper philosophical truth: there is no dichotomy between theory and practice. As Gono notes, “They are not mutual opposites but complementary sides of the same coin.” Zimbabwe’s policy crisis is in part a cognitive one—a failure to think synthetically. Too often, theory is relegated to academics and practice to bureaucrats, with little attempt to fuse the two in a coherent national strategy. The result? Reactive policies, fragmented implementation, and short-termism masquerading as pragmatism.

True pragmatism, as I understand it, is not opportunism. It is the ability to apply principles to real-world constraints without losing the essence of the ideal. This requires a policymaker who possesses not just IQ but EQ—emotional intelligence to understand the pain points of households, dreams of youth, and fears of the investor. Zimbabwe needs policies that resonate with lived experience, not just donor metrics.

This is why positioning matters—not only in marketing, but in national strategy. As Al Ries puts it, “Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.” Applied to policymaking, it means anchoring national development in narratives that people believe in. It means aligning policy signals with public sentiment, shaping confidence through consistency, and placing Zimbabwe’s value proposition clearly in the minds of investors, citizens, and the diaspora.

Yet policy narratives without institutions are castles in the air. Here, Daron Acemoğlu in his book titled Why Nations Fail reminds us: “Economic institutions shape incentives… and it is the political process that determines what economic institutions people live under.” Zimbabwe cannot unlock economic transformation without reforming the very institutions that shape incentives—from how land is administered to how capital flows are treated, from how public appointments are made to how long-term savings are protected.

For example, why has pension fund capital, worth billions, failed to ignite broad-based investment in local productive sectors? It’s not for lack of money—it’s for lack of conviction in the ecosystem, rules, and continuity that govern investment. And yet, as it is always argued in different instances, pension capital could serve as the patient fuel for Zimbabwe’s next industrial chapter—if guided by policies that are morally grounded and technically sound.

This is the space between convention and conviction—the sacred ground of pragmatic policymaking. It is in this zone that Zimbabwe’s turnaround lies. A zone where policy is neither abstract theory nor populist sloganeering, but a reasoned, moral act of nation-building.

In closing, we must understand that policymaking is not merely the art of the possible—it is the art of the right. Zimbabwe needs not just economists and administrators but architects of moral imagination. The future will belong to those who understand that crafting policy is not about managing the present—it is about designing the future, with both conscience and competence. We have the potential, and, in some ways, we are moving in that direction but at a very slow pace where it will take Rome forever to build.