The Sunday Mail
ED Mnangagwa
ACROSS millennia, generations and civilisations, human movements have been a permanent feature.
Africa, which anthropology tells us is the cradle of mankind, unleashed humans to different hemispheres of our globe.
On the African Continent itself, more movements took place in different directions as communities sought more land and more hospitable parts to claim and settle as permanent homes.
We in Southern Africa trace our origins to a massive human dispersal historians have termed Bantu Migration. Our forebears, we are told, hailed from the Great Lakes Region, before migrating southward towards the tip of our Continent. Mfecane, we are again told, was another mass movement of our forefathers, only northward this time.
In the fullness of time, our forbearers traced and retraced steps, all the time creating communities, civilisations and polities.
Today our Nations on the African Continent are a rich mosaic of peoples, tribes, languages and cultures. We have always been a footloose species.
The nineteenth century saw mass migration of Europeans into Africa, leading to the continent’s gradual conquest and eventual occupation by colonialists.
This outward, western expansionism arose in circumstances of extreme population pressures, acute poverty and virulent diseases in countries to the North of our Continent.
Typically, Cecil John Rhodes, after whom colonial Zimbabwe was once named, came to the southern tip of Africa from Britain as a poor invalid.
Southern Africa gave him back his otherwise broken health, while our rich mineral resources gave him a fortune. To this day, his Estate, built from African mineral resources, remains inexhaustibly endowed.
After the Second World War, Europe settled its demobilised, war-weary soldiers here on the African continent, including on Zimbabwean soil.
To this day, we have areas which historically were carved out for the exclusive settlement of these veterans of European wars.
One such area is called Himalaya, to the East of our country. Both wars and peace have dispersed and triggered human movements, across time and space. Human movements are as old as mankind.
Many reasons explain this phenomenon. These range from sheer insecurity, the search for secure land, treasure hunting or to sheer desire to conquer, occupy and expand territorial jurisdiction. Alongside these movements is the meeting and mutual enrichment of genes, civilisations, cultures and languages.
Hybridity is thus a direct result of human movements and contact. Today, no civilisation grows pure unto itself, sealed from influences from other cultures and civilisations. Rather, civilisations have evolved through reciprocal interchange, making them a common human heritage.
Here on the African Continent, our Agenda 2063 envisages the eventual paring down of borders as peoples, capital, goods and services move freely across African space.
This is a deliberate contrivance by all of us under the aegis of the African Union. Indeed the African Continental Free Trade Area which our countries acceded to a few years back, is a key building block towards a Continent freed from artificial borders.
Beyond our Continent, pressures of globalisation have grown stronger and inescapable.
Today countries, regions and continents evolve interconnected, all to create what is known as a global village. Events in any one corner of the globe impact and reverberate right across continents, often in real time.
The mark of the age we survive and live under is the death of time and space. Technology, trade, human movements, conflicts and even terrorism, have made our globe closely networked and connected, both for better and for worse.
My recent visit to United Arab Emirates (UAE) for Dubai Exposition 2020 again reminded me of this reality of a globalised age.
Here was an exposition of all nations and peoples of the world, big and small; black, white, yellow, brown or of any colour, all in one space.
Here, too, were economies of the world meeting and interacting harmoniously in one common space and in one common market.
Cultures, too, met and melded in ways that reminded us once more that no man or woman is an island, one unto himself or herself.
Like the rest of humanity, Zimbabweans have been on the march, leaving their homeland of birth for foreign ones.
Their reasons for doing so are many and varied.
Arguably, it is an exercise in futility to try and itemise them. The key thing is to acknowledge that like all nations under the sun, Zimbabwe has a robust and far-flung emigre community.
Collectively, we call them the Zimbabwean Diaspora.
President Mnangagwa and his delegation engage the Zimbabwean community in Dubai last week
Whether on our African Continent, in Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East or in Oceania, the Zimbabwean diaspora community is very vibrant and displays a repertoire of top skills and competencies. Above all, they remain connected to, and engaged with, their homeland.
This connection takes many forms, not least of which is through remittances back home.
As I write, the Zimbabwe Diaspora remittances have now surpassed US $1 billion a year.
This is no small sum, by no means a small contribution to inflows into our economy. That makes our diaspora community a veritable factor in national development, indeed a force for greater good.
In my recent interaction with the Zimbabwean Diaspora Community in United Arab Emirates, it became starkly clear to me that our systems in Government are still to come to terms with this phenomenon.
While we claim to have a diaspora policy, it woefully lacks a strategy and mechanisms for seamless interaction with this large and critical body of Zimbabweans abroad. Often, we have come short, including in providing such basic consular services like birth certificates and travel documents.
This must now change, aided by the introduction of e-passports and an effective online portal for dealing with and meeting the daily needs of our citizens in the diaspora.
Wherever they are, whatever reasons took them there, they remain our citizens, equal to, and just as important and as deserving as their counterparts here at home.
The conflict situation in Eastern Europe again revealed serious shortcomings both on the part of Government and that of Zimbabweans living abroad.
While our Embassy in Russia yearly sent missions to Ukraine to update records of our citizens in that country, not many of them were forthcoming until hostilities broke out.
While it is commendable that we were able to evacuate them in good time, already, a gap had been shown in respect of our capacity to account for and keep track of Zimbabweans as they move across the globe.
The need to develop this capacity places equal and shared burden on our diplomatic missions abroad, and on Zimbabweans in foreign lands who must register with embassies covering countries which host them.
In my interaction with many Zimbabweans abroad, I have discovered that between them, they wield an array of high value skills, indeed skills our country requires to leapfrog and develop in no time.
Today’s world runs on technology, which is why we have accorded Science and Technology a pride of place in our overall curricula.
Zimbabweans in the diaspora have been vastly exposed to these critical skills which, as I have discovered, they are willing to repatriate home under various, mutually convenient arrangements.
Our power utility, ZESA, has just received a handful of high calibre engineers who horned skills in different power utilities of the world.
They are now making a difference at ZESA.
While our comprehensive skills audit revealed serious deficits in almost all areas of science and technology, we have not gone a step further to create avenues and mechanisms for plugging these gaps through skills residing in our diaspora communities.
We have to have avenues for that to happen, bearing in mind the burden to make our skilled citizens want to come home is that of both Government and the private sector.
We need a comprehensive policy and strategy for that to happen soonest, including embedding these important skills in our tertiary institutions, our industry and in our innovation hubs and technology incubators. Indeed our Research and Development Policy must tap into Zimbabwean citizens living abroad.
My interaction with Zimbabweans abroad, too, revealed that many of them have made contacts and built gainful business partnerships in host countries. These contacts and partnerships are a solid springboard for transforming this key community into an investor community back home.
There is a clear readiness to do so, as indeed I saw in UAE when I was confronted by a Zimbabwean specialist physician who fervently asked for land on which to build a hospital in Victoria Falls Resort City.
Why should land for such a key and strategic investment not be availed to our own people free of charge?
It got me to wonder whether our mantra, Nyika Inovakwa Nevene Vayo, seriously addresses and responds to the needs of Zimbabweans living in the diaspora, especially those seeking to invest back home.
The Diaspora Bond which our Ministry of Finance and Economic Development is setting up must be expedited so there is a secure and mutually rewarding avenue for diaspora participation.
The Victoria Falls Stock Exchange must make this possible, with Government going all out to provide and publicise friendly instruments for diaspora participation.
The yield for such a bond should be attractive enough and in foreign currency.
In equal and urgent measure, our Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency, ZIDA, must step up its activities to target Zimbabweans abroad who may want to set up shop back home.
These must be facilitated in all ways possible, including by availing industrial stands or factory shells built to purpose for free, or on concessional rates.
After all, more jobs will be created and greater value created in our Economy.
Because of the cross-cutting nature of investment activities which attract Zimbabweans in the diaspora, I am directing that a working committee on diaspora affairs, led by relevant ministers is formed without delay.
Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade should chair it, deputised by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.
The ministries of Home Affairs, Industry and Trade and that responsible for Lands and Agriculture, should be part of this working committee which must report to Cabinet.
Other ministries can be co-opted as and when issues relevant to their portfolios emerge.
This directive is consistent with our whole-of-government approach which daily guides us.
Another pressing issue which Zimbabweans in the diaspora consistently and insistently raise is that of access to land. They, too, need and feel entitled to benefit from our land reform programme. In my response to them on this very pressing matter, I have tempered them on two counts.
First, that land is finite and thus will not grow to match the ever growing demand. While the land audit has revealed availability of more land for allocation and reallocation, clearly not every Zimbabwean will access land.
Second, I have warned them that there will not be any special treatment of Zimbabwean in the Diaspora when it comes to agricultural land.
Those in need of agricultural land will have to join the queue like the rest of Zimbabweans.
However, in respect of industrial stands for setting up shop, Government is ready to show preferences in their favour.
Be that as it may, we face an ever growing land hunger in the country.
This places a huge responsibility on those enjoying access to land already.
They must work the land to make it productive.
Should they fail to do so, or utilise it fully, Government will intervene to repossess and reallocate to those willing to work the land fully and productively.
I am aware that the responsible Ministry is amenable to partnerships on agricultural land.
This is yet another avenue available to Zimbabweans in the Diaspora.
Alternatively, they could find niche in value chains we have defined for the sector so they invest for export processing. After all, they have knowledge and even contacts in countries which host them.
With disruptions in global supply chains, the time is now for Zimbabwe to produce for world markets.
To that end, we need export zones located close to our international airports, all of which must have modern cold chains. We are looking at revamping our cargo service, possibly in partnership with one of the major airlines.
All told, I am very clear a new frontier for us to conquer is that of our people living abroad.
Fortunately it does not involve any further human migration or conquest; it only requires that we reorganise our way of doing business, and re-orientate our attitudes towards our children, siblings, relatives and friends abroad so we embrace them as a part of us they have always been. Nyika inovakwa ne vana vayo!
