The Sunday Mail
Last week I received a number of calls and messages from people who were disappointed that my article did not touch on factionalism.
The change in my approach has been occasioned by the fact that the President and First Secretary of Zanu-PF, His Excellency Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe pronounced himself on the issue of factionalism by indicating that it would be resolved at the party’s 6th National People’s Congress.
It is the tradition in Zanu-PF that once a person senior to oneself has spoken, no one else may speak.
Furthermore, those that recall my first article on factionalism will remember that I indicated that the motivation for writing about factionalism was to try and have the issue ventilated to such an extent that focus and attention would be turned away from it and towards the economy.
In addition, the Zanu-PF 2013 Election Manifesto cover has four instructive messages which included “Team Zanu-PF”, “Bhora Mugedhi, Ibhola Egedini”, “Taking Back the Economy”, and “Indigenise, Empower, Develop and Create Employment”.
Consequently, the Zanu-PF Government of President Mugabe is required to fulfil election promises according to those messages, amongst others. You will note that the last two are decidedly economic.
The manifesto implored Zanu-PF to work as a team to score not just the political goal of winning the election, but also of taking the economy through indigenisation, empowerment, development and employment creation.
Whilst political and factional contestations make for screaming and sensational headlines, they not only fail to put food on people’s tables, but also derail people from further developing themselves.
The appetite for information and news surrounding factionalism has been sown, fertilised, grown and developed to such an extent that is as embarrassing and ridiculous as the sight of people focusing on taking pictures of injured people at an accident scene instead of helping the injured.
News and information about factional contestations do not result in socio-economic transformation at the individual, household, community or national level.
I believe that, as a nation, in our individual and collective personas, we should strive to focus on progressive issues despite their inability to create sensational newspaper headlines.
This series of articles on the Accelerated Implementation of Zim-Asset seeks to focus your attention back to the issue of socio-economic transformation.
Yes, you! These articles are for you.
I am, therefore, imploring you to wade through them despite the absence of any sensational revelations about factionalism and Zimbabwe’s body politic. I am hoping that your reading of these articles will enable you to conceptualise how you can drive your own empowerment for yourself, your family, your community and your nation.
As indicated last week, this series on accelerated implementation of Zim-Asset will address five issues, three of which relate to areas that are touched upon very briefly in the Zim-Asset document, whilst two relate to structural and institutional dimensions of Zimbabwe’s economy.
The five issues revolve around three chapters of Zim-Asset, which are each made up of two paragraphs and only take up less than a page. Chapter 4, 5 and 6 relate to the implementation structure, monitoring and evaluation and funding and debt management.
This week I will interrogate the concept of deploying our human and natural resources towards implementation of Zim-Asset.
I believe we should leverage more on human resources to accelerate Zim-Asset’s implementation.
Consequently, I propose the use of dialogue as a tool for galvanising the human skill and talent.
However, we must ensure that everybody that is seized with the revolutionary, national and strategic task of accelerating the implementation of Zim-Asset does so in an effective manner.
As a result, I also propose the use of evidence for making decision during these dialogues.
But before I explore the issue of dialogue for sustainable socio-economic transformation, and the use of evidence for accelerating implementation of Zim-Asset, I need to highlight a couple of instances in which the Almighty has blessed this country with abundant human and natural resources.
I will draw on these two examples to illustrate that the availability of a natural resource should be combined with the use of existing investment around that resources to accelerate implementation of Zim-Asset.
I have selected examples that are related to the work that I do myself.
The moral here is that you need to look around what you are doing to identify how implementation of Zim-Asset can be accelerated around areas that you have intimate knowledge of.
The first example that I will discuss is centred on the abundant coal reserves that we have in Zimbabwe and the potential for thermal electricity generation.
Over and above having massive coal reserves, Zimbabwe not only hosts the Southern African Power Pool, but is ideally located as a transit hub for transmission.
Zimbabwe has already invested in the Hwange Power Station through the generation assets themselves, transformers and switchgear, and the transmission infrastructure which includes the National Control Centre.
Over and above the hard investment, Zimbabwe has access to soft infrastructure in the form of skills, knowledge, competence, procedures and systems.
The recently signed engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for development of units 7 and 8 at Hwange Power Station is a practical example of how we can leverage on our existing resources as a nation.
Units 7 and 8 will be able to deliver an additional 600MW. But it does not stop there.
During construction of Hwange Power Station in the early 1980s, a significant amount of work was done in Zimbabwe by Zimbabweans.
Forty-seven percent of the EPC value for those early stages of Hwange Power Station was conducted by Zimbabwean companies.
What percentage of the US$1,5 billion that will be invested in stage three of Hwange Power Station will be locally conducted work?
The second example relates to the tobacco success story that has ridden on the back of Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Programme.
From a superficial perspective, the success of the tobacco sector can be attributed to the availability of land and geographic resource endowments. Due to a unique combination of location and climate, Zimbabwe is the only country that is able to produce flavour tobacco.
However, this geographic blessing has been combined with a highly literate and educated population to create an indigenous tobacco production sector.
Tobacco production is a highly complex, technical and knowledge-intensive exercise.
The manner in which the tobacco sector has been an exemplar of empowerment can also be attributed to the institution of the appropriate empowerment policies.
Such policies have included the Land Reform Programme, the drive for education and the Look East Policy.
The Look East Policy has been the catalyst that has seen the creation of funding for tobacco production in such a manner that it would be instructive to examine this funding model with a view to applying it to other crops.
Furthermore, Chinese funding is enabling the construction of units 7 and 8 at such a low interest rate of two percent over a 20-year period.
With these two examples, I have sought to explain how implementation of Zim-Asset can be accelerated through deployment of not only our God-given resource endowment, but also our developed hard and soft infrastructure.
That deployment of resources can only be initiated and driven by people. It is for this reason that dialogue becomes a critical component within the Zim-Asset implementation nexus.
Already, Zimbabwe has a framework for dialogue that was started in the 1990s with the Langkawi International Dialogue and its offshoot, the Southern African International Dialogue.
These dialogue processes gave rise to the institutional framework known as the National Economic Consultative Form (NECF). The NECF has established taskforces for implementation of Zim-Asset.
But is the work of the NECF visible?
As it is presently constituted, is the NECF relevant in furthering the transformational agenda? To what extent do the current private sector players represent the structure and makeup of our economy given the structural shift occasioned by the empowerment drive?
The processes for dialogue that were initiated as the NECF was set up almost two decades ago need to be reviewed to accommodate the current realities that we are faced with.
Furthermore, the dialogue processes need to be located within the accelerated drive for sustainable socio-economic transformation, better known as Zim-Asset.
But more importantly, these dialogue processes need to be contextual and relevant.
This, therefore, means that dialogue processes must be decentralised spatially to go to communities.
In line with Zim-Asset (that cliché again!), dialogue processes must be in accordance to the strategic clusters as stated within Zim-Asset.
However, there is grave danger with dialogue if it is ill-informed and/or mis-informed.
For dialogue to be effective, it needs to be backed by evidence and knowledge. Ultimately, dialogue should result in decisions being made.
But the decisions that will be made must themselves be based on evidence. It therefore becomes critical that as the process for dialogue are being reviewed, measures for institutionalising evidence-based decision-making are incorporated within the dialogue processes.
The most critical component of the evidence around the processes for dialogues involves quantifying the resource that is available for the drive for sustainable socio-economic transformation.
What is the quantum of the resources that is available for realising the outputs envisaged in the strategic clusters of Zim-Asset?
Accelerated implementation of Zim-Asset must be driven by judicious exploitation of our abundant human and natural resources.
These resources need to be marshalled and co-ordinated in the drive for sustainable socio-economic transformation through the sharing of ideas in well established dialogue processes.
But the dialogue processes need to be informed by evidence so that the decisions that emanate from the dialogue are robust. In this manner, we can accelerate Zim-Asset’s implementation.
This article is dedicated to Takudzwa Wesley Goronga. Our own asset mumhuri; our Zim-Asset. Wofamba zvakanaka munin’ina wangu. May your dear soul rest in eternal peace mwana wamai vangu.
Zim-Asset. Mina lawe silomsebenzi. Iwe neni tine basa.
Honourable Patrick Zhuwao is Chair of Zhuwao Institute, an economics, development and research think tank that focus on integrating socio-political dimensions into business and economic decision-making, particularly strategic planning. Zhuwao is the holder of a BSc (Honours) degree in Computer Systems Engineering and an MBA degree in Information Technology Management (City University, London). He also holds BSc (Honours) and MSc degrees in Economics (University of Zimbabwe), as well as a Master of Management (with distinction) degree in Public and Development Management (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). You can reach him on [email protected]. [email protected]
