The Sunday Mail
“Attitude determines your altitude. If you have a bad attitude, even if you are way up there, you will come crashing down, and if you are still trying to take off, a bad attitude will keep you on the ground, revving your engines but going nowhere.” This quotation is attributed to Strive Masiyiwa, Zimbabwean entrepreneur and founder of the Econet Wireless Group.
He is a self-made man with a reported fortune of US$600 million.
He has worked hard to be where he is, and is therefore eminently qualified to dispense wisdom about what inspires him and keeps him going. His observations have application in a variety of situations, especially for us in Zimbabwe.
This is because we are not just a nation badly polarised politically but one which is experiencing extreme alienation from itself, hence the relevance of Masiyiwa’s observation for, to a large extent, alienation refers to one’s attitude in relation to their immediate situation.
The effect of prolonged periods of political polarisation is that a large section of the population who feel that their fortunes can only be improved by alignment to opposition parties will never support policies proposed and crafted by the ruling party.
In fact, they don’t want to be associated with them.
For some in the Diaspora, nothing positive can ever come out of Zimbabwe until a leader of their choice comes into power, in this case a leader chosen for them by white former commercial farmers and their British supporters.
For some living in Zimbabwe, there is an attitude of withdrawal from all national programmes associated with the ruling party. To them, nothing positive can come out of ZANU-PF policies.
They have decided they are not going to be part of the land reform. Black economic empowerment and indigenisation are not part of their development.
Even where they see success as in the growing tobacco production figures, their focus is on the downside — company closures and joblessness.
The situation is made worse for the desperate youths by their short-sighted political leadership who never miss an opportunity at rallies to refer to the 2,2 million jobs promised by ZANU-PF in its election manifesto last year.
The truth is that there is little Government can do to help companies which cannot adapt to changed and changing trading circumstances.
Most of them are on the side of the IMF and the World Bank when it comes to opening up the economy. However, once competition gets too hot they cry for Government intervention. Ultimately they are forced to shut down and provide opportunistic politicians with cheap ammunition to demand jobs.
This is unfortunate for the youths.
While they shout for jobs at rallies, many of their counterparts who have embraced Government programmes are benefiting from various youth funds. Many are creating their own jobs on the farms. Those who wait in the industrial areas for opportunities shall wait a while longer.
There are very few companies willing or able to engage new labour. More than that, many companies would rather minimise as far as possible taking on new people given what they consider the high cost of labour and labour laws which make it very costly to dismiss employees.
As far as possible many companies would rather invest in automation and only employ critical staff.
This is where the issue of skills training comes in.
Most of those complaining about lack of jobs often have no skills beside their university degrees. They want a white collar job which gives them an office and a business card.
They cannot imagine themselves producing something, hence their contempt for shop-floor operations and farming.
Now when Masiyiwa says “attitude determines your altitude” he makes a simple statement with profound implications.
He started in Harare in the 1980s. Once he decided to leave PTC to form Retrofit which gave birth to Econet, he did not look back. He wasn’t thinking about a cosy job in an office. He wasn’t thinking about a big salary. His attitude has elevated him to his current altitude.
He believed he could do it, and he did it.
Unfortunately for Zimbabwe’s future prospects, polarisation in politics has taken centre stage in everything. It is more of blame games than co-operation. And the differences are more about attitude.
Opposition politicians believe Zimbabwe’s salvation can only come from outside while the ruling party believes we are the solution.
Foreigners can only come in to help, they can’t determine for us what we do with our resources.
The result is that the political leadership has failed to speak with one voice on key national issues.
The focus of opposition leaders is on getting into power.
They would rather everything collapsed than see an improvement in the country’s fortunes before they get into power.
This explains the furore generated by EU Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia’s comments recently when he stated that there was no crisis of leadership in the country and that most NGOs were trapped in the past and thus failing to grab opportunities presented by the new political realities in the country.
For his part, Dell’Ariccia has played a huge role in trying to normalise relations between Zimbabwe and the European Union, which imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe over the land reform programme. The bloc has since indicated it might remove the remaining sanctions at a meeting of its council in November.
All this has been received with muted protests by those who believe only regime change will do for Zimbabwe.
That attitude has largely influenced the behaviour of Zimbabweans in the Diaspora.
Many of them are confused about the actual political environment in the country. Online media often portray a siege situation, talking about political uncertainty as if the country were in a civil war.
MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s self-serving claims (which he has failed to substantiate) that last year’s harmonised elections won overwhelming by ZANU-PF were in fact rigged, have been elevated to a delegitimising judgment about that outcome.
Thus some of them are left unsure whether to invest in the country or not given the perceived lack of security of their investments. Many others fear they might be accused of dealing with the so-called illegitimate Government.
The same attitude problem has poisoned the launch of Government’s economic recovery blueprint, Zim Asset. It has rarely been evaluated for its merits or lack thereof than its being a product of ZANU-PF’s election manifesto.
No effort is spared to attack it in opposition circles as a pipedream, yet it opens many opportunities that whatever deficiencies are there should be very easy to remedy.
Including clarifications of the indigenisation laws that the investor will be allowed to recover his costs and a decent return of profit, there should otherwise be no debate about security of investment.
That Zimbabweans themselves appear divided, though this is more on politics than policy, only serves to strengthen the hand of those who want to invest in the country on their own terms, which experience has show over the years, invariably leaves the host nation the loser.
Thus, so long as Zimbabweans don’t change their attitude to say this is what we want as a nation and investors shall do so on our own terms, we shall continue to rev our engine but go nowhere.
