The Sunday Mail
Inconvinient Youth with Umthanakhe Taura (IYUT)
Inconvenient Youth with Umthanakhe Taura has been following the self-proclaimed “new sheriff in town” to ascertain whether there is any bite to the bark. On October 1, 2015, Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Minister Patrick Zhuwao presented a lecture at the National Defence College on “Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Policies and their Impact on National Security”.
IYUT presents Bla Patso’s lecture. Because the Honourable Dread is quite verbose, IYUT has split the lecture into bite-size chunks for easier consumption. Enjoy!
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In this paper, I look at Zimbabwe’s indigenisation and economic empowerment policies and their impact on national security.
The Government of Zimbabwe has been progressively putting in place the legislative framework for accelerating the implementation of the country’s indigenisation and economic empowerment policies, with the most recent legislative instrument being Finance Act (No 3) of 2014.
I submit that the accelerated implementation of the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies enhances Zimbabwe’s national security.
I will start my presentation by establishing the context of my analysis through outlining the progression of Zimbabwe’s indigenisation and economic empowerment policies. I will then proceed to unpack the concept of national security as a prelude to discussing the successes and drawbacks of the implementation of Zimbabwe’s indigenisation and economic empowerment policies.
I will next analyse the internal national security implications that have militated for the accelerated implementation of indigenisation and economic empowerment policies, as well as analysing the external threats to national security and the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies.
I will continue my analysis by reiterating how Government has been continuously and consistently instituting mechanisms for accelerating the implementation of indigenisation and economic empowerment policies through legislative instruments.
One such instrument has been the Finance Act (No 3) of 2014 which has increased the number of ministers mandated to implement indigenisation and economic empowerment policies. This has had the implication of making the implementation of indigenisation and economic empowerment policies a parallel activity as opposed to the implementation being serialised prior to the coming into effect of this particular act this year.
I am convinced that my colleague Cabinet ministers will provide added effort, impetus and energy to the efforts being already conducted in my ministry in pursuit of accelerating the implementation of the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies in our collective efforts aimed at safeguarding Zimbabwe’s national security.
My analysis will conclude by unveiling the proposals that my ministry will be submitting to Zimbabweans on how the economic empowerment component of the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies can be further accelerated in pursuit of national security.
The proposals that my ministry is working on will result in unlocking over US$93 million during 2016 to be applied towards establishing and strengthening community economic empowerment enterprises.
There would be over US$1,5 million disbursed to each one of the 61 Community Share Ownerships Trust registered countrywide. Such an amount will have significant impact on the quality of lives of our communities.
Consequently, my ministry will be engaging with communities and their legislators to secure their support for accelerating the economic empowerment fund considering that such an initiative would result in each constituency accessing close to half a million dollars on average.
Policies
The first indigenisation and economic empowerment policy framework was adopted by the Government of Zimbabwe in February 1998 after close to a decade of lobbying by various indigenisation pressure groups.
The policy framework was revised in October 2004 and legislated for in March 2008 through the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act (Chapter 14:33).
Subsidiary legislation has continuously been published to give operational effect to the indigenisation and economic empowerment legislation. This has included two statutory instruments, SI 21/2010 and SI 116/2010, which provide for the general regulations pertaining to how the act will be implemented.
Furthermore, sector specific implementation frameworks were developed by representatives of all sectors to take into account the peculiarities of the different sectors.
These have been published in three general notices which include GN 114/2011 which addresses the extractive industries, GN 459/2011 which caters for manufacturing, and GN 280/2012 which covers all the other sectors not covered by the other two general notices. Statutory instrument SI 66/2013 outlines reserved sectors.
In 2013, the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies were further strengthened constitutionally through Chapter Two on National Objectives of the new national constitution that was approved by over 93 percent of Zimbabweans.
The Finance Act (No 3) of 2014 has bolstered the implementation framework for the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies by expanding the team of Cabinet ministers tasked with implementing the provisions of the operative Act.
It is rather unfortunate that there are ignorant utterances that seek to give the impression that Government is back-pedalling on the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies. These ignorant utterances betray the shallowness of their proponents especially in light of the manner in which the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies are being legislatively accelerated and strengthened as discussed earlier.
I find such ignorant utterances to be completely ludicrous and asinine given the fact that HE President Mugabe and Zanu-PF successfully campaigned on a manifesto that called for indigenisation, empowerment, development and employment creation.
This, therefore, means that the current government has been electorally mandated to continue with the implementation of the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies.
How could anyone conceivably believe that the indigenisation and economic empowerment laws will be repealed given the absence of any such notion in the legislative agenda enunciated by HE President Mugabe on the occasion of the official opening of the Third Session of the Eighth Parliament of Zimbabwe?
All in all, the Government of Zimbabwe has consistently demonstrated its commitment to the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies through legislative measures that have progressively strengthen the implementation modalities of the policies. In effect, the legislative actions of the Government of Zimbabwe signal acceleration in the implementation of the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies.
This scenario amply illustrates that the legislative footprint on the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies paints a picture of solid policy consistency. Why then do we seem to get an impression that there are policy inconsistencies around the implementation of indigenisation and economic empowerment?
Given the fact that a significant number of the ignorant utterances around the indigenisation and economic empowerment policies are premised on misunderstandings of the impact of foreign direct investment, I am tempted to opine that these ignorant utterances are foreign inspired.
As such, these ignorant utterances represent threats to Zimbabwe’s national security. Do some of our officials know that they are compromising national security through their ignorant utterances? Are they aware of what national security entails? What is national security?
National Security
National security is freedom from foreign domination.
The concept of national security has expanded from an earlier definition by Walter Lippman in 1943 when he conceptualised national security in terms of war. Harold Lasswell’s 1950 definition of national security emphasised the aspect of external military coercion.
Arnold Wolfers considered national security in terms of acquired values in his 1950 definition.
In 1966, the National Defence College of India conceptualised national security in terms of national power. Former United States Secretary for Defence, Harold Brown, included economic and environmental security in his 1983 definition of national security.
Charles Maier’s 1990 definition of national security incorporated the notions of autonomy and self-determination whilst Prabhakaran Paleri added the ability to address multi-dimensional threats in his 2008 definition of national security. This paper takes national security as simply being free from foreign domination.
National security has several elements which include military, political, economic, environmental, and natural resources dimensions.
The military dimensions relate to the ability to deter military aggression whilst the political dimensions relates to maintaining stable social order and cohesion.
The economic elements of national security talk to freedom to choose economic policies whilst the environmental and natural resources elements talk to issues of access and protection.
TO BE CONTINUED……………….
