Zimbabweans must learn from South Africa: the majority can still be poor in an upper middle-income economy

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

Politicians and state economists love to chant economic indicators as if they are magical incantations capable of conjuring prosperity out of thin air. 

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For years now, Zimbabweans have been fed a steady diet of a singular, glittering promise: the attainment of an “upper middle-income economy by 2030.” 

With only four years left before this supposed economic promised land is reached, it is time for a cold, hard dose of reality. 

We must look across the Limpopo River to understand exactly why this classification is a dangerous illusion that will do absolutely nothing to rescue the ordinary Zimbabwean from the clutches of grinding poverty.

South Africa stands as a towering, tragic monument to the deception of economic classifications. 

It is officially classified as an upper middle-income economy, boasting one of the largest gross domestic products on the continent at over $427 billion. 

Yet, beneath this glossy statistical veneer lies a humanitarian disaster. 

South Africa is the most unequal society on earth, carrying a Gini coefficient of approximately 0.63. 

Its middle-income status has not stopped a catastrophic official unemployment rate of 32.7%—which swells to a staggering 43.7% when including discouraged work seekers—from leaving almost one in two working-age citizens excluded from the formal economy. 

Youth unemployment remains trapped between 45% and 60%. 

Instead of prosperity, this structural inequality has bred deep-seated frustration, despair, and a toxic, rising tide of Afrophobic and anti-migrant sentiment. 

The South African reality proves a fundamental truth that our leaders desperately want us to ignore: a country can be incredibly wealthy on paper while its people starve in the streets.

If a massive economic powerhouse like South Africa cannot translate its upper middle-income status into a decent life for its ordinary citizens, what makes Zimbabweans believe a similar paper classification will perform miracles here? 

The mathematics of our current reality make the 2030 promise not just improbable, but insulting. 

Today, nearly half of our population lives in extreme poverty, over 60 percent struggle under general poverty, and at least 85 percent exist under what is classified as upper-middle poverty. 

Over 90 percent of our people are out of formal employment, forced to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence on street corners.

To suggest that in a mere forty-eight months, these millions of impoverished souls will suddenly be hoisted into comfortable prosperity by a change in a treasury spreadsheet is a fantasy of the highest order.

The core of the problem is that gross domestic product and gross national income are aggregate figures. 

They measure the total wealth generated within a country’s borders, but they say absolutely nothing about who actually owns that wealth. 

It really does not matter what impressive figures the finance ministry writes in its budget books, nor does it matter if our economic growth rate looks beautiful on a slide presentation. 

As long as the structural architecture of our economy remains unchanged, any new wealth generated will continue to flow directly into the pockets of a well-connected minority.

We cannot talk about economic growth without confronting the staggering inequality that defines modern Zimbabwe. 

We must begin to ask the uncomfortable, hard-hitting questions that the elite would prefer we keep silent about. 

How does a single individual in a supposedly struggling economy become so obscenely wealthy that they can throw around millions of dollars like pocket change? 

How do we justify a reality where a select few can purchase private jets, build sprawling mansions, and hand out luxury vehicles and cash like confetti, while millions of their fellow citizens struggle to put a single plate of sadza on the table or find the money to send their children to basic primary school?

This is not wealth built on industrial innovation or genuine economic productivity; it is the product of a rigged system where public resources are privatized by a cartel of the elite. 

When the state’s riches—our gold, our diamonds, our lithium, and our tax revenues—are funneled into the hands of a predatory minority, the national GDP might rise, but the citizen’s standard of living collapses. 

This concentration of wealth at the top does not trickle down; it solidifies at the peak, leaving the rest of the nation to fight over the crumbs of a failing state.

Zimbabwe is rapidly cementing itself as another deeply unequal society where economic growth and human development have parted ways. 

Even if we miraculously hit every single statistical target required to be officially designated an upper middle-income economy by 2030, nothing will change for the grandmother in Epworth, the vendor in Bulawayo, or the peasant farmer in Gokwe. 

Ten years from now, the poor will remain trapped in the same grinding cycle of survival, while the elite continue to flaunt their unearned riches.

We must refuse to be pacified by political slogans and superficial economic labels. 

An economy is only as healthy as its most vulnerable citizen. 

As long as we fail to address the systemic corruption and deep structural inequality that loots the national purse for personal aggrandizement, the dream of 2030 will remain just that—a cruel, glittering mirage designed to keep the impoverished quiet while the wealthy continue their feast. 

Our liberation lies not in achieving a meaningless bureaucratic classification, but in demanding an economy that values human dignity over deceptive statistics.

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