The Sunday Mail
Nyasha Patience Mandeya
The essence of Zanu-PF’s ideology is to economically empower the indigenous people of Zimbabwe by enabling them to fully own their country’s God-given natural resource and the means of production to unlock/create value from these resources. Zim-Asset, the tool crafted for this purpose, is well instructed by Government’s policy on indigenisation and economic empowerment.
This policy will create dignified employment, especially for the youth, distributing wealth among citizens more equitably, triggering a general improvement in quality of life, and bringing about sustainable national development.
The empowerment thrust is the basis upon which economic projections under Zim-asset were made: an average GDP growth rate of nine percent by 2018; 250 000 low-income housing units to be built; 1 250 public buildings to be rehabilitated; 2 500 shell factories, flea and vendor market stands to be created; and 310 clinics and 300 schools to be built, among many other targets.
Zanu-PF’s pro-people policies have always been informed by an unwavering determination and revolutionary commitment to address and meet national aspirations of all Zimbabweans.
Critical to empowerment is the consciousness of the power within that leads to a desire to define our own destiny, thereby enabling indigenous people to negotiate access to capital and markets within the dynamics of economic engagements.
Power and Economic Dynamics
In the realm of political economics is the notion of adaptive governance which instructs Government to respond to the people’s yearning for an empowered society – the basis upon which Zim-Asset was crafted.
Zim-Asset’s vision is “Toward an empowered society and a Growing economy”.
In this regard, consolidating people power through employment includes:
◆ Mutually reinforcing economic, social and political aspects which allow people to move out of poverty through participating and contributing to and benefiting from growth processes on terms which recognise the value of their contributions, respect their dignity and make it possible for them to negotiate a fair distribution of growth;
◆ Allowing people, as individuals or collectively, to conceive and define better lives for themselves; and
◆ People exercising control over their livelihoods through their ability to make choices on what productive activities to engage and invest in.
The means of empowerment are varied.
These include empowering arrangements through value chains, which is a typical tripartite model. An example is that being implemented by Honey Care Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania), which provides equipment and training, and purchases honey from farmers.
There can be social protection measures such as cash disbursements which play a crucial role in stimulating economic activities by the poorest households.
These improve the terms on which the poor engage markets, by enabling them to avoid selling their products when prices are at their lowest, or to demand better wages and employment conditions.
The resulting expenditure also has significant multiplier effects in the market.
We can talk of decent employment. In Zimbabwe, employment is overwhelming in the informal sector of the economy. This includes both self employment and wage employment in small unregistered enterprises meaning that poor people are in unprotected jobs.
Zim-Asset promotes social dialogue and a responsive regulatory environment to tackle the challenges of organising informal sector workers and developing social protection policies conforming to decent work principles.
Access to and control over productive assets is a critical element of economic empowerment.
Zim-Asset provides a system for equitable distribution, which is critical for economic growth and poverty reduction.
Then there is political empowerment. People’s political empowerment is about influencing policy-making demands and calling the State to account.
The Zim-Asset framework is premised on a political empowerment process in line with our national Constitution.
Zim-Asset was crafted to achieve sustainable development and social equity anchored on indigenisation, empowerment and employment creation, which will be largely propelled by the judicious exploitation of the country’s abundant human and natural resources.
Social and political empowerment results in individual and collective capacity to secure eradication of discriminatory practice in markets, services and State institutions. It also contributes directly to growth through expanding the human resource pool.
The topical goal of the people of Zimbabwe is to enjoy a high quality of life in terms of food security, decent work, reliable transport, quality education, good healthcare, dignified housing, sanitation etc.
In essence Zimbabweans aspire for all the good things of life that come with and from economic growth, which is essentially about wealth creation that is reflected by the country’s GDP through a transmission mechanism.
Zim-Asset was crafted to achieve sustainable development and social equity anchored on indigenisation, which will be largely propelled by judicious exploitation of the country’s abundant resources; contrary to ill-informed policies that contribute to a disabling environment limiting empowerment and keeping people in chronic poverty and incapacitating them in a political economy in which they contribute to growth without themselves enjoying it.
Zim-Asset is optimally structured to create an enabling environment where citizens are empowered in economic decision-making and management of public resources in an effective way that strengthens accountability.
Notable achievements under Zim-Asset to date include youth and women having benefited under the youth empowerment and women development funds, while approximately US$40 million has been mobilised from community share ownership schemes to fund development priorities.
Parastatal reforms under Zim-Asset will facilitate implemention of empowerment policies through vehicles such as the employee share ownership schemes.
By virtue of Government being the largest employer, there will obviously be immense benefits from this.
Zim-Asset is not merely an economic policy narrative but forms the basis for an organised system of heightened economic reforms, whose successful implementation will result in the consolidation of people power.
◆ Cde Nyasha Patience Mandeya is Zanu-PF’s director of economic affairs. She wrote this article for The Sunday Mail.
