The Sunday Mail
The Zhuwao Brief continues with last week’s theme on how Zimbabwe has been able to develop superlative intellectual excellence on the back of its world renowned prowess in education.
However, the intellectual excellence of Zimbabwe’s human capital can be equated to the nation’s untapped mineral resources.
There is need to establish structures and mechanisms that can be used to realise the value of the intellectual resources Zimbabwe has.
This week I highlight portions of First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe’s address when she officially launched a housing project and commissioned earth moving equipment in Kadoma recently.
It is a shame that segments of our media fraternity missed the critical components of the First Lady’s address, choosing to focus instead on the subsidiary, though important, issue of the Prosecutor-General’s unfortunate remarks on the age of consent.
As was expected, the opposition media totally ignored the messages.
Attention was diverted to imaginary succession narratives that sought to portray an image of disunity and contestations between the two VPs and the First Lady.
Despite the First Lady thanking the two Vice-Presidents for the harmonious working relationship between herself and them, the opposition media splashed banner headlines about boot-licking.
It seems some of our feeble-minded journalists cannot see that the First Lady has spent close to half of her life with President Mugabe.
She has not only observed one of Africa’s finest brains but has had the unparalleled opportunity of being a constant pupil and protégé of a grandmaster.
It, therefore, follows that when one is given an opportunity to interact with the First Lady, one is obtaining some of the wisdom of His Excellency, albeit through an intermediary.
I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever with the VPs taking notes from the First Lady. It would be foolish of the VP’s not to.
To illustrate this point, the Zhuwao Brief will summarise the two objectives that the First Lady indicated as the reason why she officiated at the Kadoma event.
Firstly, the First Lady agreed to be the guest of honour to provide support to private sector initiatives. Secondly, he took the opportunity to demonstrate her vision of Zimbabwe as an education hub premised on one of President Mugabe’s enduring legacies to the nation.
The First Lady visited Kadoma primarily because an indigenous businessperson invited her to officiate at one of his ventures.
In her remarks, the First Lady indicated that Zimbabweans have been devoting an inordinately large amount of time towards non-productive political discourse which oft-times is premised on contestations.
As a nation, we have stopped working and are focussing on arguing.
This abhorrent behaviour is not only manifesting itself across the ruling party and opposition divide, but is prevalent within all political parties, including Zanu-PF.
What makes the situation worse is that some Zanu-PF leaders have deserted their responsibilities of leading Zimbabwe’s sustainable socio-economic transformation and development to focus on personality-driven fights. Our businesspeople have a tremendous amount of intellectual capital that they harness in their entrepreneurial endeavours.
It is this human capital that President Mugabe refers to in the last phrase of the first paragraph of the foreword of the Zim-Asset document when he talks of the “judicious exploitation of our abundant human and natural resources”.
The First Lady, by officiating at the ground breaking ceremony and commissioning of the earth moving equipment, is putting into action the words of the President of the Republic.
She is demonstrating what our political leaders and ministers should be doing.
She has always been a practical demonstrator of President Mugabe’s vision as is amply demonstrated by what she has achieved at Gushungo Dairy; a practical example of how land reform is fundamental to industrial development.
To what extent have our ministers within Zanu-PF gone out of their way to facilitate the business endeavours of ordinary Zimbabweans?
How can Zim-Asset’s vision be realised if the political leadership doesn’t support the business community?
The First Lady chose to practically demonstrate what our ministers and leaders should do in their responsibility to facilitate the nation’s economic growth and development through supporting the business community.
The second point that the First Lady made in her speech was the issue of leveraging Zimbabwe’s position as Africa’s most literate nation.
The First Lady indicated that she has a vision of Zimbabwe as an education hub.
She took time to not only illustrate the binding constraints that inhibit us from realizing such a vision, but went further to unpack how we can address some of these hindrances
It is an uncontested fact that Zimbabweans are world leaders in education.
With such an uncontested position as one of the world’s most educated populations, we are positioned to be a world leader in the provision of educational services.
Furthermore, this position is now being brought to the fore by recent events in South Africa and the United Kingdom which house Zimbabwe’s largest Diaspora populations.
The UK is moving towards tightening conditions for foreigners in that country as evidenced by their stance on deporting foreign nurses.
This is compounded by the recent Afrophobic violence in South Africa which has made living in South Africa a risk to life and limb.
This means Zimbabwe should start reintegrating our superlative human capital as it is being hounded out of those territories.
The Afrophobic violence in South Africa has also affected black students from several other countries.
Many foreign black African students in South Africa no longer feel safe to such an extent that if there was an alternative they would opt out of that country.
Zimbabwe has the potential to offer a far more superior alternative to South Africa for several reasons; among them its peace, safety and security, as well as pleasant weather and friendly people.
However, Zimbabwe’s higher education institutions are failing to provide sufficient accommodation for Zimbabwean students.
Whilst the infrastructure for providing education exists, the binding constraint is student accommodation. But Zimbabwe has sufficient land on which such infrastructure could be built.
The issue revolves around how to fund construction of the required infrastructure.
Considering that these foreign students can pay for their tuition and accommodation, it should be relatively easy to develop mechanisms that will allow for funding and construction of educational infrastructure.
The private sector would need to do this work.
Whilst the First Lady indicated that she had two main points to make during her speech, she wove the two points in a manner that illustrated their symbiotic relationship.
The First Lady went to Kadoma to lend support to a private sector initiative and unpack a vision of Zimbabwe as an education hub.
However, the realisation of Zimbabwe into an education hub requires private sector initiative.
The Zhuwao Brief wishes to conclude by congratulating the First Lady for practically demonstrating how we can all contribute towards cementing President Mugabe’s legacy.
President Mugabe has delivered empowerment to Zimbabweans through education and land as well as leading the struggle for political Independence.
The First Lady has demonstrated that land needs intellectual capital for it to yield value by what she has achieved at Gushungo Dairy and her range of Alpha Omega products.
She is showing additional leadership by articulating a vision of Zimbabwe as an education hub premised on the empowerment of education through President Mugabe’s leadership.
Surely, it makes sense to take notes if one who has the privilege of interacting with the First Lady.
She not only has a deep understanding of President Mugabe, but has demonstrated her capacity and capability to translate the vision of President Mugabe into action.
Zim-Asset: Iwe neni tine basa. Icho.
Patrick Zhuwao is chair of the Zhuwao Institute, an economics, development and research think tank focused on integrating socio-political dimensions into business and economic decision making, particularly strategic planning. He can be reached at [email protected]
